Always have an End Game

You know what's awesome?  Christmas.  Family, food, and new stuff.  It's fantastic.  An underrated part of Christmas is the new socks Santa always leaves in our stockings - is there anything better than slapping on a fresh pair of clean white socks?  I say no.  In fact, Christmas is so awesome, there's only one thing that's more awesome:

Christmas when you have young kids. 

Up to this point, I have to say Christmas is most awesome with a four year old.  Jonah really got into it this year.  He woke up every morning, jumped out of bed with the single minded focus of finding Christopher, our "Elf on the Shelf" that moves around our house every night.  Once that task was completed, he moved onto placing another ornament on our magnetic advent calendar Christmas tree thing on the fridge.  Only then would he bothered with his normal routine of announcing that he was going potty and that he expected me to have his chocolate milk made and Ben 10 on the TV by the time he got back.  We must've gone to see Santa at some store or another four or five times. On Christmas Eve, Jonah saw a plane in the air and was convinced it was Santa and exhorted me to "use the gas pedal dad, he can't beat us to the house!"  Jonah asked me one night why our neighbors didn't have lights on their house.  Being the idiot parent I am, I saw this as a good teaching moment to explain to him that some people didn't celebrate Christmas.  You'd think I just put a milkshake in front of him and ripped it away...he looked shocked.  "Why wouldn't they celebrate Christmas?  Santa won't come to their house!  They won't get any presents!" I could tell that maybe this conversation wasn't going to have my intended impact.  I tried explaining that some people celebrated a holiday called Hanukkah (yes I googled the spelling) that lasted for eight days and they got presents every day.  Jonah scoffed at this and said "So?  Santa brings like a HUNDRED!" and then promptly walked away.  We'll revisit religion at a later date I guess.

Jonah really got into the present thing.  At least the receiving part.  Jocie was happy just to tear up wrapping paper for four straight hours.  As we're opening presents, Jonah kept asking where his next present was.  He was getting a little greedy and impatient, so I called him aside to try to calm him down.  I said "look buddy, you need to pump the brakes a little bit.  You're not the only person getting presents here.  You need to sit patiently and wait your turn.  If you can't do that......."

It was at this point I realized I was screwed.  I hadn't thought out a punishment yet to attach to this threat.  I certainly wasn't going to give Jonah a timeout on Christmas for being excited.  I also realized that everyone there (my mom, stepdad, brothers and their significant others) were watching me intently, ready to grade my parenting skills.  So, of course, I say the dumbest thing possible.

".....I don't know what's going to happen."

I'm not sure if Jonah interpreted it as an open ended threat, in that literally any punishment imaginable was awaiting him if he kept up his "gimme gimme gimme" routine, or if he picked up that his dad was an idiot and he had me behind the eight ball, but it didn't much matter as the whole room exploded in laughter and Rachel shook her head and gave me one word, deadpan answer..."nice." Any parenting leverage I had at that moment was gone forever, and Jonah was free to continue on his merry way.
As an aside, I can't guarantee that I remember this correctly, but I'm pretty sure Jonah did in fact tone down his "me first" Christmas after that.  Maybe I did get through to him in some small way.  That in itself would be a Christmas miracle.  If Rachel parents with the precision of a surgeon with a scalpel, I'm a butcher with a hatchet....but apparently our kids are turning out alright thus far, so I guess it works alright. 

It's hard for me to think that a Christmas is going to be better than the one we just had, but, like I said that fateful morning, I don't know what's going to happen.