The other day Ethan was playing outside (it was one of the cool days that followed Gustav, and it was nice to let him take advantage).
We had this plastiky fake-ceramic garden fairy out there, which was already in pretty bad shape. I happened to look out the window and saw him carrying it over to the concrete patio, right in front of the window. He can't see inside because of the solar screens, so he didn't know he was being watched...
So he dropped the fairy, and though I didn't see it (because the impact point was below what I could see through the window), I knew it would break. Ethan's reaction was priceless though. He just stood there motionless for a few seconds staring at the broken pieces with a look of complete horror on his face. At that point I started cracking up and everyone else in the room started watching the show.
After the realisation of what he had done set in, Ethan went into damage limitation mode. He picked up two of the larger pieces and ran in a wide arc across the back lawn looking for somewhere to hide the evidence. He ended up hiding them at the end of the deck, and then came scurrying back for more pieces.
At this point we went outside and tried to look cross. :) The rest is basic parenting, but the reactions he had were just priceless.
