How to Make Your Grandmother Cry

1. Wait until she leaves the room to make a bottle for the baby, and then get in a fight with your big brother over the Candyland box.

2. When she runs back into the room, carrying the baby and trying (unsuccessfully) to screw the top on the bottle at the same time, ignore her commands to "Let go of that box!"

3. Continue to ignore her, and when your big brother doesn't let go of the box, bite him on the thumb.

4. Let go of the box when he does, and when your grandmother says, "Go up to your room right now," run out of the room instead, laughing like an insane maniac.

5. Keep out of sight while your grandmother is running cold water over your brother's thumb, and continue to stay out of sight while she sits him down on the couch and explains to him that, yes, it was wrong for you to bite him on the thumb, but he asked for it by grabbing the box out of your hand to begin with.

6. Don't respond when she calls you.

7. Don't make a sound of any kind while she takes the baby upstairs and puts her in her crib.

8. Stay extremely quietly in whatever hiding place you are in while your grandmother and your big brother search every nook and cranny of the house for you.

9. Ignore her incraesingly desperate cries of, "You're really scaring me. I don't know where you are. please come out right now. This isn't funny. I'm really worried. I don't know if you're OK."

10. Don't even giggle when your big brother comments, "He must have found a really good hiding place."

11. When your grandmother has looked upstairs three times and in the basement twice and under the dining room table and behind the boots and the backpacks in the hall closet and under the computer and behind the shower curtain and inside all of the kitchen and bathroom cabinets, and has imagined every possible unimaginable thing that coulkd have happened to you, and finally realizes she hasn't really looked behind the couch in the living room, because after all, she was sitting there with your brother so how could you have gotten back there without her seeing you, unless......you sneaked back there during the 60 seconds she was in the bathroom running cold water over his hand and so she looks behind the couch and there you are, grinning from ear to ear, you little devil, and clearly you think this has been the most fun you've had since the water park last month, and your grandmother doesn't know whether to laugh or cry or yell at you or hug you but she is mentally exhausted by now so she just flops down on the couch and buries her face in her hands and sighs.

12. Climb over the back of the couch so you are sitting next to her, and just beam at her with your angelic little smile until she remembers that you are really the cutest thing on the planet. Even if you did almost make her cry.