Tonight I had the lovely job of extracting two splinters from my son’s hand. It took 60 minutes, a gallon of tears and every reverse psychology trick I could think of to finally get him to sit still. Every time I would get ready to remove one he would stall. Here is the list of reasons:

• Can I say something?
• I need to go to the bathroom.
• I want to give mommy a hug.
• I want to give YOU a hug.
• Can we turn off the lights?
• Why do you have to use tweezers?
• Can mommy sit next to me?
• My legs are cold.
• I need to go to the bathroom.
• I want to give you a hug again.
• Can we just leave it?
• Why will it get infected?

Rinse and repeat.

Would you believe that later he said it wasn’t that bad?