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I’ve always known my kids are smart. Most of the time, their smarts serve them well. But, on the odd occasion, their smarts get them into deep, deep doo-doo. PDD is eyeball-deep in doo-doo right about now, thanks to her smarts.

Let me rewind.

Monday morning, while PDD was getting ready for school, I was drinking my coffee and checking my email. I saw a PayPal payment receipt for a registrant for a teleclass I’m holding next week, so I logged in to my PayPal account to check it out.

Imagine my horror when I saw a pending charge for $174.92 from…get this…Build-A-Bear Workshop dated 10:21am Sunday morning!!!

In a roar that could be heard for miles, I called PDD to my office. She’s been harping on me to get her a Build-A-Bear ever since Christmas. She denied any knowledge of how such a charge could have appeared. Given that it was pending, not cleared, there wasn’t much for me to do but wait.

And I didn’t have to wait long. Tuesday afternoon, the FedEx truck pulled up in front of the house and delivered a Scruffy Puppy and not one, but NINE…count them: N-I-N-E outfits! All delivered Next Day Air to the tune of $50.90!!!!!

In the words of Second Son, “This must be one of those times that your kid screws up SO BAD that you can’t even get mad about it – you just have to laugh.”

Uhh….yeah.

Needless to say, my darling PDD and I had a heart-to-heart conversation upon her arrival from school Tuesday afternoon.

Thanks in large part to my parent coach (and HELL YES, I have a parent coach! I’m a single mom, for cryin’ out loud – I KNOW I need the back up!) – I have resisted the urge to kill her. So far…

I let her stew in her own guilty juices for a day or so before issuing any kind of edicts as to consequences and restitution.

All the other issues aside, I have to say I’ve got a pretty damn smart 9 y/o daughter. She managed to get through and complete 3 checkout screens, figured out how to upgrade the shipping to the quickest (and most expensive) option available, and completed her purchase using my PayPal debit card. Had she chosen another card, I might not have known about it until FedEx showed up.

Even Oldest Son was impressed. He said, and I quote, “Damn, Mom! She’s got bigger balls than either one of us (meaning he and Second Son)! There’s no way he or I would have had the nerve to try and pull off a heist like that!”

And let me assure you – that’s sayin’ something coming from him…