2010 The Christmas Standoff!

Ahhhh! Christmas memories, we can all remember waking up on Christmas morning so excited to see what Santa brought! I wanted to make sure and record this because, I am sure we will not have another Christmas morning quite like this one. About 7:30 Christmas morning the kids could stand it no more, they were ready to get up and see what Santa brought. Everyone was gathered in our bedroom as we always do to read the Christmas story, say a prayer and then go see what Santa brought. This year we had a special Christmas gift....ha! M had the flu. She was feeling a little better Christmas AM and had only run a low grade fever during the night. She had given us a little trouble the day before taking her flu medication, but I had put it in chocolate milk and with a little coaxing she had taken two doses the day before. I went downstairs, prepared the medicine in Chocolate milk and brought it back upstairs. Z and I told M that as soon as she took her medicine we could all go downstairs and see what Santa had brought. That's when the STAND OFF began. We never dreamed she would refuse to take the medicine, but that is just what she did. We were not too worried, who could resist the bribe of "take your medicine, so you can see what Santa brought". After about 20 minutes M still refused to take her medicine. She now had S and E crying and M was enjoying the power of controlling when we went down to get our presents a little too much. If we had ever dreamed she would not have taken her medicine, we would have never said "you can't go down and get your presents until you take your medicine", but now it was Christmas morning, S and E were crying and M was quite calmly refusing to take her medicine. This is not the Christmas morning I had envisioned. After about 30 minutes of this nonsense, Z and I had no choice but to hold M down, of course with her kicking and screaming and to force the medicine in her. Not really the Christmas morning we were hoping for. Just a little lesson in parenting. Keeping it real and just knowing that you have to just laugh or you would be crying! So much for the Hallmark movie, perfect memories on Christmas mornings! That's okay, I would change any of those memories, except maybe next year we will not think we will outsmart the kids and bribe them on Christmas morning!