The Cure and The Dillemma

Vignette #1:  The Cure for the Common Faker

Cadence loves medicine.  She sneaks cough drops, she fakes fevers, and pays very close attention to who gets medicine for what ailment.  A while ago she found that all she had to do was throw up in church to be rewarded with some yummy tums, or "The medicine that crunches".  Since then she's been faking tummy aches quite often.  I've been worried for some time about this medicine fetish, and I'm always worried that I'm reading her wrong--maybe she really DOES have symptoms and I'm not taking care of them?  If I start being sneaky about medicine whenever somebody else gets it, will she start to be sneaky, too?  How long until she starts trying to climb up to the medicine cabinet?

And then the other night I cured it.  I had to go in and give Campbell some Tylenol (poor girl is getting molars), and that reminded Cadence that she had a tummy ache and needed medicine.  So I came back with a medicine cup of straight lemon juice.  GENIUS!  I felt mean and asked Spencer if it was one of those things that falls in the "bad parenting" bucket.  His answer was that I was "awesome".  I wish I had more than a mental snapshot of her face...classic.

The next night it was the same story.  Exactly.

And then tonight she said to me, "Mom, I have a tummy ache..." (Which I believe she may have actually had this time), and then thinking it over she slowly said, "but, actually I don't need any medicine!" 

Problem solved.

Vignette #2:  Cadence's Dilemma

Cadence knows that there is a strictly enforced rule that she is not to get out of bed once she is down for the night. This has been a real problem for us, so we've tried every way possible to keep her to stay in bed.  She loses bed-time privileges--"blanky with balls", the closet light, the door gets closed...

Tonight after she had been down for at least 30 minutes, she came into the room where I was feeding Layla. 

"Mom," she said, "A cup fell out of my bed."

    "Well, can you just pick it up yourself?"

"No."

    

    "Why not?"

"Because I can't get out of my bed."

Hmmm....  she finally grasps the rule of no getting out of bed.  I guess things around here aren't as white/black as Spencer and I expect them to be.

I can't look at this picture without the song, "Richest Man On Earth" popping into my head and remembering when my dad told me he was that, because of his family.  I believed him, by the way (that he was actually that rich.  He was not :)  ).

Anyway, this daddy loves his girls.