You Better Not Pout
Our flooring guys are total rock stars - the floor should be done days ahead of schedule. However, for now, I'm blogging from my mom's house. Thank you for all the kind comments on my wee little primate's birthday. She is having a wonderful start on her third year.
We actually dressed the kids to the nines and hauled them to the mall (OMG, I just typed maul! hahaha so appropriate!) for Santa Photos. (Yeah, yeah, Carmi, I know. I know.) But that adventure, my friends, is deserving of an entire entry, and I don't have time to do it justice today.
My four year old son (and actually, all three of my kids) have a nice/naughty switch in their brains that gets flipped to ALL NAUGHTY, ALL THE TIME on December 1st each year. I don't know. It's nuts.
So, being a parent governed by cliche', I have been barking "Santa! Watching!" and "I'm calling Santa!" 500 times a day. Seriously, there has to be some other way to motivate my children to be good, but this is the one time of year I fall back on the pathetic be good or you ain't gettin' nothin' routine.
Ahem. So, yesterday, while my mom and I were trying to wrestle my son into his glad-rags, my mom started laying it on thick. "If you continue like this, Santa will fill your socking with coals and switches."
The boy said, "What are switches, Gram?"
My mom filled him in - "Switches are sticks."
The boy looks very serious for a moment, and my mom and I exchanged a silent Woo! with our facial expression. We got through! We got through!
"Well, sticks are kinda fun to play with," offers the boy. "I mean, you can build things, and beavers use them for dams, and the pigs! Pigs use them for houses. And you can wave them around..."
My mom and I had to look away so he wouldn't see us fighting not to laugh.
Comments
We used to joke that for birthdays and Xmas we'd just get our oldest sticks and rocks because he enjoyed those more than his toys.....too bad we never followed through...we would have saved enough money for a vacation or something fun for us adults....
BTW_ happy birthday to your little one!!!
Posted by: turtlemama | December 14, 2004 11:48 AM
Can see laughing so hard......LMAO!
I have a little boy just like that!
Posted by: Andrea | December 14, 2004 12:11 PM
I love this post. Then again, ALL of your posts resonate at a fundamental level within my wonked-out parent's/husband's/writer's brain. It must be the absolute truth of your words, or the flowy (yes, I know I made this word up...I do that, occasionally. OK, often) way you deliver 'em.
I wish I had Santa as an excuse. I suppose Hannukah Harry will have to do in his place.
Happy birthday to your little one. What a great picture - so perfect for the age.
Posted by: Carmi | December 14, 2004 2:49 PM
Last weekend I was buying stickers for my classroom at the School Box and my son was being, well, my son. Terrible. I had to literally drag him from the store kicking and screaming. Next stop. Wal-Mart..same thing. So, I used the "Santa is watching everything you do. Santa is everywhere.If you want presents you'd better get it together." Well, who do you think we met as we turned down the next aisle" Yep! Santa Claus! The look on my son's face was priceless. And when Santa said "Have you been a good boy?" My son burst into tears! Priceless!
Posted by: Ney-Ney | December 14, 2004 3:49 PM
Great timing with this post...I just finished laughing my ass off at my best friend's Christmas card, which features her one year old son bawling his eyes out on Santa's lap.
The inside reads, "It's the most wonderful time of the year."
Dang it, I'm crackin' up again...
Posted by: carrie | December 14, 2004 6:31 PM
We also ran into this brick wall with our oldest, who is now 11. I was talking with my Dad about how she seemed to go into devil mode around Thanksgiving and then became "normal" and sweet again after the first of the year. My Dad suggested that we call Santa. As soon as he said that I remembered when I was a kid - the oldest of 4 - if we were being very bad my Mom would use Santa's secret number and we would have to confess everything!!!! So, we started calling Santa (my Dad does a fantastic Santa). When the kidos got old enough to start asking how we got his number, we explain that when a baby is born the parents are given the number at the hospital. They have eatten this for the last 8 years. The kids now look forward to calling Santa every first weekend in December - we always seem to visit Santa late and this way I know what they want. Oh! The up side is that the kidos now hardly ever act up - they know that Santa is just a phone call away all year long! Hope it helps!
Posted by: Jen - Lance's Wife | December 14, 2004 9:08 PM
In France, the bad santa brings switches and not coal to spank the naughty children. My children were already so terrified of Santa when they were little(hated bearded men) that I wouldn't have dared say "Santa's watching." They would have freaked out.
Posted by: Margaret | December 14, 2004 9:22 PM
This time of year, Santa does indeed serve as a great stand in for the old "Wait 'til your father gets home" routine, making him the heavy (in the non-rotund sense of the word). Easter Bunny just doesn't carry that sort of weight.
Posted by: Mellie Helen | December 14, 2004 11:16 PM
My mom never even used switches on us, and she was a believer in corporal punishment, but as soon as we could understand she told us the switch story, and thiose sticks suddenly were not very cool anymore.
Posted by: Tim Pintsch | December 15, 2004 6:21 AM
Happy Birthday to your little one.
I think all kids have an "overdrive" switch that automatically kicks on after Thanksgiving. There's nothing you can do about it.
Posted by: TW | December 15, 2004 8:11 AM
I was watching According to Jim last night and thought of this post. The little boy kept asking what coal was and Jim said that cola was rocks that you could light on fire. The little boy said, I want coal. Coal sounds cool.
Posted by: Jazzy | December 15, 2004 9:56 AM
I can soooo relate to the December 1st thing. My girls have been awful (I love them, but awful is an accurate term).
I have threatened to call Santa 1001 times already. I do have one thing that works; I tell the girls about the elf that Santa assigns each family from Halloween until Christmas to keep tabs on all the family's children for Santa's naughty or nice list. My four year old was being rotten at the mall so I pushed the double stroller on over to Santa(who was in the middle of a photo opportunity) and my daughter said he is too busy to see me being bad! Every day is a holiday!
Posted by: Melonie | December 16, 2004 4:01 AM
Ha ha! I programmed Santa's number into my phone! I actually had to call yesterday. It didn't work. He was still satan spawn all day. He's starting now. I think it's the lack of sun! Who knows. Your son sounds like my 8 year old he says things like that.
Posted by: jenni | December 16, 2004 8:27 AM