Spoiled Rotten...

…or just impossible to please. With Christmas only 4 sleeps away my family has been setting about the task of enjoying this last bit of the holiday season. Every year we try to get Lily all excited about Christmas, get those sugar plums dancing in her head, the whole thing. Christmas has always been a big thing in my family. Shopping, baking, wrapping, listening to music, it all starts right after Halloween (you heard) and goes until February if we can at all help it. Sometimes we throw a little pseudo Christmas party in April or May just for the hell of it too.

My sisters and I have very specific traditions that we observe every Christmas, something I am going to be talking about in a blog post in the very near future, as I am struggling with the incorporation of the new traditions Steve and I are trying to develop into the old ones that I hold so close to me from growing up.

Today’s post however is about how hard we are trying, and how spectacularly we are failing, at making Christmas special for our spoiled rotten 4 year old.

Last night we tried to make an “all about Christmas” day. We wrapped some presents, listened to Christmas music while we did our chores, collected old toys while we cleaned our room to donate to charity, got peppermint chocolate milkshakes, and went to see Santa, who had returned to the North Pole by the time we got there-oops. Because Santa was gone, we went on a drive through some of the better lit neighbor hoods in town and Oooh’d and Ahhh’d over the fabulous light displays. All in all, it was a lovely day.

Unless you are 4.

Apparently, several things were wrong this completely lovely day.

1) We wanted to listen to “I want a hippopotamus for Christmas AGAIN” and the radio “NEVER, EVER” plays that song. (though it was on twice that day)

2) Chores are so BOWING, and I didn’t MAKE this mess, the baskets did!

3) I didn’t want a milkshake, I wanted ICE CREAM!

4) Ponytails are hurty and I don’t like my sweater over my dress its not beautiful. I don’t care how cold it is I want bare arms!

5) I don’t WANT to see Santa, he is going to bring me coal because I was naughty! (apparently, if we avoid Santa, he may forget to check the list a second time)

5) We NEVER, EVER, EVER get to go through the James Street Estates twice. Resulting in crying as we left the park where we were looking at lights.

*sigh*
So a long day of desperately trying to get the child into the Christmas spirit ended up with her parents feeling dejected and exhausted. It just feels like it is impossible to please this little girl sometimes. She even ended up with a spanking from daddy at the end of the night because she spent the entire time getting ready for bed telling us how un fair it was that NEVER, EVER (a favorite phrase) gets ice cream, and how it isn’t fair that she has to brush her teeth. Daddy lost it. He’s sorry now though.

This is, of course, my penance, because I was EXACTLY the same way when I was little. My parents often tell the story of taking me to Disney Land when I was 5, and I spent the entire time crying. I was afraid of all the rides and always hungry but they refused to feed me, at least in my recollection.

Merry Freakin’ Christmas!