From my e-book Home Alone

Your office is set up. You are rocking and rolling. It’s all groovy.

Until you start to notice that things are missing.

The space formerly known as your office, has become the family version of Target.

Pens, markers, erasers, and paper will be considered the contraband to have. Even though they have their own.

My daughter steals my pens with such regularity that it’s become a game. I leave crappy ones lying around in hopes that she will take those instead. No dice. They remain on the desk until I move them. But, let me slip up and pull out one of my favorite gel pens, and it’s gone in a matter of seconds. She’s like the wind, that girl.

My family takes my stuff because it is mine! My stuff is just better than theirs.  Maybe it’s because I’m always saying that to them.

Yes. I have a lot in common with three year olds.

But, the lure is in the actual taking. That means that there are things that I simply cannot give away to my child. If I tell her not to touch something, it is as good as gone.

I eat Happy Meals because I like the toys (don’t judge me). I used to manage a therapeutic program for children under the age of six. The Happy Meal toys were a good thing to have. When I moved home to work, I brought all of my office thingys with me,  including my collection of Happy Meal toys. I instructed The Girl not to mess with them. What she heard was “take what you want and clip them all to your backpack for decoration.”

Yes, she raided them all.

During her raid, she missed the little green Teeny Beanie Baby frog that I adore. I knew that once she spotted him, he was a goner, so I casually offered him up one evening in a look-what-I-found kind of way. She gave me the smelly frown and said “no thanks”. Mr. Froggy was saved. He sits on my desk unharmed to this day.

If you love something, offer it to a teenager, and they’ll never touch it.