Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Why I Bribed My Daughter and How My Son Became The Slayer of Snakes

My four year old daughter gave up naps shortly after she turned one. It has been a long three years. Today, after putting my son down for a nap, I tried to convince my daughter who look exhausted to lay down and take a nap with me. She wanted to play. As I fought sleep I finally resorted to bribing her. I am not proud of this, but I told her that if she would just go to sleep then I'd take her to the store and get her a toy.

She went to sleep.

The joke was on me, though, as by the time my daughter fell asleep I only got to nap for fifteen minutes before my son woke up wanting to play.

Two hours later my daughter woke up. She came down the stairs and the first words out of her mouth were, "Can we go get a toy now?"

I'm a woman of my word so I took them to the store. My son picked out a sword, which against my better judgment I bought him. He uses his baseball bat, tennis racket, sticks and anything else he can find as a weapon to hit his sister with, so a sword was probably not the best idea. Before buying it I told him that he could not ever hit his sister with it and if he did I would take it away.

He said, "No, I'll smote snakes." And that he did. He spent the rest of the afternoon hunting and smoting imaginary snakes throughout our house.

1 comment:

Robyn said...

Wait, bribery is supposed to be a LAST resort?

Bear is 3 and still naps (thank goodness). If he doesn't, he is content to lay in my bed, watching tv quietly for an hour, while I sleep soundly next to him. I will cry tears of sadness the day that stops!