Outwitted by my 5 year old

Exasperation at my 5 year old's bedtime stall tactics and the heat of the day that pervaded the house had gotten to me.

"There is no way you're still hungry..." I began the enormous list of the various foods he had just finished in the past 2 hours.

"Buddy, come on." But I'm sooo hungry.

"Please stoooop."  I'm sooooo hungry!

"It's bedtime.  Enough.  You're not hungry you just don't want to go to bed."  But I'm sooooo huuuungry.

"Lay.down. NOW.  There is no eating."  More groaning due to apparent dying of hunger.

"Why are you making my life so difficult right now?"  I just need a banana!

We had no bananas.  

Numerous parental phrases in a tone I wished I could reverse every time the words came out of my mouth.

Minutes that seemed like an hour went by as I struggled with both boys during bed time hour.  The guilt mounted as I tried not to think about the way I was talking to my five year old son.

He finally laid still beside me.  As I tickled the soft inside of his arm that lay across my stomach, love and guilt and exhaustion ran through my heart, body and mind.  But mostly it was love.  Love always trumps the rest.

"I love you bugs."

"I love you too....
                           ----what does 'I love you' mean?"

"What do you think it means?"

"I don't know."

"Is love a good feeling or a bad feeling?"

"Gooood."

"Of-course.  I love you is one of the best things you can say to someone.  It means you would do anything for them."

......"like get some fruit for you when you're hungry?...."

I laughed.  And laughed.

And laughed until I was hit with a startled terrifying realization that my 5 year old child just outwitted me.

That quite possibly his question - a good one but one which he clearly already knew the answer to - duh - was a calculated tactic to guilt me into feeding him once again.

I'm in trouble you guys.

Big. BIG trouble.