Santa Claus is Coming to Town

Today was a beautiful, warm-ish, sunny day; so I decided to put Heidi in the double stroller and walk to Emilia's pre-school to pick her up.

When I showed up she had tears in her eyes. Upon inquiry, Emilia revealed that someone else got the Peter Pan book from the book exchange and she wanted it. When she realized I wasn't going to rip it out of the other kid's hands and give it to her, she transitioned into full blown melt down.

I had to pick her up off the floor, kicking and screaming and haul her out the door. Had I driven, I could have locked her in the car and threatened her in the silence of my own vehicle. But instead I had to try and strap her in the stroller while she screamed in my face how much she hated me and this was the worst day ever...while ripping her boots off, throwing her coat on the ground and kicking Heidi in the back so she was crying as well.

Under those working conditions, I couldn't get E strapped in, so I just had to resort to running as fast as I could so she would be too scared to jump out. (I'm really fast by the way...) After about four blocks of this she was still screaming and kicking Heidi. Finally I stopped the stroller and threatened her, "If you don't stop right now, I'm going to stop the next police car that drives by and tell him to take you away." What? It worked. I'll pay for therapy later.

Fast forward two hours. Melt down is over, we made it home and E and I were in the kitchen baking Christmas cookies. I asked Emilia, "What's your favorite thing about Christmas?" She answered, "Getting presents. I'm going to get lots of presents because I'm ALWAYS good." "Really?" "Yeah, Some kids aren't good so they get on the naughty list." "Interesting...what types of things do you do to get on the naughty list?" I probed. "Hitting, yelling, going to time out...stuff like that" she answered. "Huh. What about kicking your sister, or telling your mom you hate her, or screaming and jumping out of strollers?" "No." Emilia reassured me, "None of that stuff. Santa can't see that." "I'm not so sure about that." I replied and burst into song, "You'd better watch out, you'd better not cry, you'd better not pout I'm telling you why. Santa Claus is coming to town. He's sees you when you're sleeping. He knows when you're awake. He knows if you've been bad or good so you'd better be good for goodness sake!"

Emilia's expression went from shock, to fear and finally to casual disregard by the time I stopped singing. She just looked at me innocently and said, "Well, I've never heard that before." So clearly in her mind, she was off the hook and still on the "Nice" list.