A "Leave it to Beaver" moment.

I'm still new to this whole parenting thing and I frequently have situations that I'm unsure of. I feel the weight of "training up a child in the way he should go" and I don't want to fail! Last weekend Josh asked Tim if he could have a sucker- after receiving and unfavorable answer, he came to me and asked the same question which is always a tactic that is frowned upon in this family! Once one parent answers, that's it- no discussion! So when the little bugger asked, I asked him what his daddy said and he told me that Daddy said "yes!" We'd been running into this lying problem in the past but I wasn't sure how I needed to deal with it. I decided that the appropriate discipline was to lose all access to sweets of any kind for a week- including soda, desserts, snacks, etc. With a three year old's vague understanding of time, we went to the calender and circled seven days and each day we put an X through the circle. Whenever he asked me for a forbidden item I asked him to go to the calender and count the circles. He handled it very well, but I'm never sure how much is understood when a lesson is being taught. So today was day 7 and as we prepared for a special outing to the zoo this morning, I made pancakes for breakfast, knowing that syrup should be on the forbidden list. Josh knew it too, and without me saying a word about his recent discipline, Josh said to me "Mama, I just want a cold pancake without any syrup." Unsure if I should carry out the full seventh day, I began to soften. I mentally wrestled with how to make sure his lesson was learned. I had pity on the little guy and told him that he could have syrup on his pancake. He replied- "Why? Because you love me?" Still not mentioning the discipline issue, I replied "yes" and he said "Mama, I'm so sorry that I lied about the sucker!"
Mission accomplished.