Bad Parenting is Fun

After being given a very thoroughly illustrated note, lamenting my cruelty and tyranny, I called both girls to my side.

"Come here, please. I have a secret to tell you!"

This lit them both up, and they forgot how evil I was.

I gathered them close around me.

"You see, I should have told you sooner, but ... I'm not actually your mother."

Their mouths fell open.

"Whaaaat?"

"Yes, you see, your mother -- your real mother -- was a beautiful, flaxen haired, milksop princess. But she died, as milksop princesses often do. And then your father married me ... your evil stepmother."

There was much giggling and gasping and "Mom! Tell the truth! Come on! Is that true!?"

Then Q chimed in with a thoroughly inappropriate (though, he assumed, adequately obfuscated) remark comparing me to the beautiful dead milksop princess. However, this remark was immediately and correctly parroted by C, and thus repeated, picked up and parroted by A.

So if you ever hear my children say I'm a firecracker in the sack, that would be why.