You gotta know when to hold 'em
But you also gotta know when to play 'em. I'm not sure that I've completely mastered either, but I at least appear to be still in the game; maybe even breaking even.
I found myself playing the Santa card this weekend for the first time. We were at Target. I had managed to successfully bypass the toy section on my way to purchase her a new school backpack, only to find ourselves in the music section where she practically did a swan dive out of the shopping cart trying to get her hands on one of the guitars on the display shelf shrieking in excitement. "Mommy! Look! Real guitar! Bobbin want to play it! Bobbin want own guitar! Bobbin take it home! Like Laurie Berkner!" The Laurie Berkner Band is her all time favourite singing group. She loves them and from a parental perspective they are actually quite tolerable. Really quite good, actually. However I was not about to purchase my little budding musician a guitar of her own. Yet. So I heard myself actually say, " well, if you really want a guitar you'll have to write Santa a letter and let him know. And you'll have to be able to tell him honestly that you've been a good girl listening to Mommy and Daddy and playing nicely with your friends.
It actually worked. Or, I guess more accurately, it yielded the desired immediate result of allowing us to move on to our real shopping goal without debate or whining. It could still come back to haunt me later.
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