…and Santa Claus taketh away.
We’ve been telling the kids that Santa Claus will be coming soon. And he’s going to take away their binkies (because they’re big girls and don’t need them any more) and give them to the little babies at daycare who DO need them.
As soon as you mention Santa now, if Sam has a binkie, she’ll pull it out and hand it to someone and say, “All done.”
For the most part, they’re down to just using the binkies when they’re in bed. They also get them when they’re sick, and since they were both sick over Thanksgiving weekend, they’ve had them a bit more over the last few days than they usually do.
So, every so often, while we’re hanging out, Sammie will out of the blue say, “Santa Claus coming.”
“Yes, Sam, Santa Claus is coming soon.”
“Binkies away.”
“Yes, Sam, he’s going to take the binkies away and give them to the little babies and bring you presents.”
The other night as I was sitting around thinking about that, it occurred to me that they really don’t understand abstractions as well as adults. And that we’re unlikely to find a real Santa Claus that will come over and accept a handful of binkies. And that it would be really difficult to explain to the Mall Santa why our kids just handed him a dozen binkies.
So, if anyone has a good solution for getting two-year-olds to believe that Santa really came and took their binkies to unfortunate babies who couldn’t afford their own binkies, please let me know.
And the kids aren’t as gullible as one might think. We’ve been putting THUM on their binkies during the day. It’s a cayenne pepper extract and it’s nasty! Sam wants nothing to do with daytime binkies and her favorite refrain these days is “binkie ucky!” (She even was singing a song about it one day) Jessie just makes a face, pulls the binkie out, gives it a dirty look, and pops it back in her mouth. Kid’s got an asbestos tongue, I swear.
The other day Jessie was sitting on the kitchen counter, and she absent-mindedly picked up the bottle of Thum. She looked at it and said, “Binky yucky” – this in spite of the fact that we’ve done everything possible to disguise the fact that Matt & I are putting something onto the binkie before we give it to them. She’s a pretty sharp little kid.
So, anyone got a connection to Santa that we could use?
