Sunday, December 27, 2009

Lessons

I will get into all the "Christmasy" updates later, but for now, I wanted to share this blogable moment at the Mason's.

so Christmas Eve. 5 PM. Christmas cookies baked and decorated. Christmas crafts completed. Christmas songs sung all day. It was Christmas all day here. We were in good spirits and enjoying family time. Then Adler asks for his Mickey Mouse race track, which was at the bottom of the black hole that is the toy closet. I told him that he had plenty of toys, new ones from the Mason Christmas a few days before, and that there would be more toys tomorrow, so no, I wouldn't get it out. "But," he said, "I really really want it. I don't want my other toys."
I told him that if he didn't want any of his toys that we would throw them out. This was where I made my mistake.

"Okay," he said.

"Okay? You don't want any of your toys?"

"No, mam, just my race track."

At this time, E came in and started in too. "So, we are going to throw out every single one of your toys and you only want your racetrack?" E asked.

To which Adler replied, "throw them all away, please, and get my race track out."

This went on for another good 10 minutes.

What were we to do? He completely called our bluff and we couldn't not do it.

So we emptied out the whole house of EVERY single toy and hid it in the back room. We took a 2 year old's toys away from him on CHRISTMAS EVE. But don't be mistaken, he was completely okay with it. He was actually pointing out toys we had missed. He was happy in the empty room with his racetrack. I mean, we even took away his beloved dog, Spot (original, I know) that he likes to sleep with every night and he didn't care even one iota. In fact, we were TRYING to get him to care and mentioned that poor Spot didn't have a home anymore. To which he replied, "Oh yes he does, the trash-can."

Oye.

We were getting nervous. I mean, we could not let this go on. We had to have a point of "lesson learned" before Christmas morning or else we would couldn't even do Christmas morning presents and Santa and all that. And then we would officially be the worst parents ever. So, finally, we convinced him that he was sorry and that he did want his toys back and that he did love and appreciate them, although I have my doubts about the sincerity. We told him that we would call the garbage man and maybe he would bring them back the next day. So after he went to bed, we spent the whole night putting all of his toys back out and organized, our night of a peaceful Christmas Eve thwarted by our efforts at a teaching moment.

I think that maybe the only lesson learned here was not to make any threats or promises unless you whole heartily believe in carrying them out.

3 comments:

Erica said...

That is hilarious!

aunt vickie said...

lol... i love it... I had to call my friend Ellen and share it with her...

Wilson said...

They sure know how to call our bluff, don't they? We had a similar moment at our house on Christmas Eve. We told Addison that if she didn't get in the bed that Santa wasn't going to come. She was content playing with a new toy she had received earlier that night. She looked up and said, "I don't care if he comes or not..I just want to stay up and play with this." Made us stop dead in our tracks!