"No, Mercer. Later."

One of the best forms of deflecting Mercer's interest in something that either may not be good for him or not in our plans for the day, is to say "No, Mercer. Later." It kind of works for everything, and after all, he can't eat candy all day, drive our car, or go on horsey rides every time he sees one. Who has the time? Mercer will usually respond with a puzzled "Oh!" and go about his business. We realize that this won't last forever (we're talking precious months here), but we especially hope that he doesn't cash in on his "No Mercer. Later."'s. To date, we've probably promised Mercer:

* 15,897 horsey rides
* 1,090,987 bags of M+M's
* 65 tubes of toothpaste and/or suntan lotion
* 5,000 hours of driving our car
* 90 pounds of pretzels
* 500 gallons worth of ice cubes
* 300 additional hours on the playground
* 20 knitting needles and 15 sewing needles
* 95 hours in front of our computers
* 178 hours of couch/bed jumping
* 15 pounds of stuffed animal stuffing
* 976 puppies on city streets that "are just around the corner"
* 10 pounds of dirt from cars that are not ours
* 30 pounds of free cookie samples from Stop and Shop
* 1 set of steak knives

These are just rough estimates, of course. I've looked through all of Mercer's journals and I can't find an official running tally, so I think we're safe. Wait, he's asking to pound on the laptop again. No, Mercer! You can do that later!