Seriously?

One of Natalie's favorite treats is an ounce or two of the tonic water left over after Corey makes his favorite summer drink, a gin and tonic. He even gives her a lime slice with her "spicy soda", as she calls it. She loves it and she begs for it every time she sees him preparing to make one. She knows if she's already consumed a lot of sugar earlier in the day, the answer to her endless begging and pleading for tonic is usually a "no" and, sure enough, today was a too-many-cookies-and-jelly-beans day. So, naturally, she came to the table tonight ready to negotiate.

When her request was denied, she gave Corey a sneaky little smirk. "Well,Daddy" she said confidently, "what if I give you back your wedding ring that I took off your desk the other day and you give me some spicy soda?"

Uh?

Our responses were the obvious:

"you took what?"
"when?"
"how?"
"why?"
"and you're holding it for a ransom of spicy soda???"

"are you serious?"

I added, "why was Daddy's ring on his desk and not on his finger?"

Corey got back to the real issue at hand...our daughter had not only snatched a piece of jewelry but was now using it as leverage to get something she wanted!! Where did she learn this type of blackmail bargaining? I swear all we let her watch is PBS Kids!

We asked her to produce the ring.

She led us to her bedroom where she'd carefully hidden it beside her bed in (her words) "a place where Audrey could never find it" inside a little organza bag that she had, (brace yourself) stolen from my dresser drawer! The plot just kept thickening!

The ring looked just lovely, gift wrapped and cared for in the little ring-sized bag. She said she had seen it on Corey's desk and decided hide it and see how long it took for Corey to ask for it. Corey is not fessing up to how long it's actually been missing. Natalie insists she just took it yesterday.

Good grief. Should we be worried??? I mean, she did take excellent care of the ring but, honestly, I'm going to put the rest of our jewelry under the mattress as a precaution!! She insisted she was just doing it to be funny and we insisted she never do it again. Life is never boring around here!