Sam, Sam, the Ladies Man

Sam has two girlfriends from preschool. The Incredible Summer of Fun has become a mini-dating experience for Sam, as evidenced by last Wednesday's trip to the movies. He had one friend on each side. It's a good life.

Afterwards, we had a couple of friends come over to play on the new swing set and have lunch. The kids all played great—there were 5 total—and we actually shared some adult conversation. More good life.

The trouble started when I put Sam to bed that night. Right before prayers he told me, "You know mom, I kissed X (names left out to protect the innocent) on the lip today."

"WHAT!!??" I calmly responded.

"Yeah. It's no big deal mom, because she won it."

"She wanted it?" I asked.

"No Mom. She WON it. We were having this test, and she answered all the question right, and she won it."

"Oh, that's nice. I think maybe we ought to save our kissing for, you know, mommy and Kate and our family and stuff," I suggested.

Sam looked at me like I was crazy and said, "But why?"

"Well, I just think you're a little young for kissing," I said. And you know, at the time, that seemed very logical, but now it does seem a little sketchy. I mean, how young is too young? And you know they don't mean anything by it. It's just to see what things are like and so on. Big deal.

"But MOM," he said, "It's romantic."

Good grief.

The next day, I notified said parents, who were equally surprised and yet not at all. The girls have been kissing Sam on the cheek for a while now, but this is definitely new territory. I thought all was settled until Friday, when we had this conversation:

We were talking about someone being in love. I'm not sure the context anymore. But I thought this was a teaching opportunity, so I said, "See Sam, you ought to wait until you're at least in love to kiss a girl."

Much to my surprise, he responded, "X and I are in love, Mom."

"Sam, you can't even narrow down the list to just one girlfriend. That's not love."

So, the saga continues. No more closed door play for Sam and his girlfriends, that's for sure. And I thought Disney was so clean with its lack of kissing and all…