Oh, Charlie...

Charlie has always been a relatively docile kid with the very occasional whiny spell. You can usually count on him to tell on himself if he does something naughty, because the wrongness of whatever he did really gets to him. Overall, he has really just been a dependable, all around good kid who stays out of trouble.
The other day, in an attempt to straighten the house, I told him to go cut off the balloons that had been tied to the knobs of his dresser for weeks. They had long since died and now were only strangulation hazards waiting to be discovered. I braced myself for some protesting on his part, because he loves balloons, but he was all to happy to oblige and off to the bedroom with the scissors he went.
The house remained a flurry of activity for the next hour or so. I was in the process of cookie decorating, the kids were all putting things away, and Tucker was doing laundry. We had ordered Chinese delivery earlier so that we would not have to stop our "productiveness" to cook a meal. The Chinese arrived and everyone excitedly sat down to the table to eat. There the six of us sat, passing around the different dishes and sauces and talking about our day. The Norman Rockwell family moment was ruined when Emily very innocently asked, "Did Charlie get a haircut?" Huh? Uh, no?
The entire table panned their eyes towards Charlie who is sitting in his chair with a butchered new do. "But my hair was in my eyes" he said. He instantly got upset because he knew he had been naughty, but we reassured him though it is never okay to cut anything but paper without permission, that we loved him and his hair would grow back. Eventually.
So it took us over an hour to realize what he had done which doesn't make me feel like the most together mother in the world. He continued to apologize all night until I told him I wanted to take his picture so I could exploit his mischievousness on facebook. My, how the mighty have fallen. Oh, Charlie!