August 13, 2008 | Parenting, The Pink One, tourists
We are on a 16 hour road trip and Claudia has a fever.
She refuses to take medicine.
Let me explain that Claudia always refuses to take medicine unlike her brother (and mother, to be honest) who will take medicine just because someone else is sick and it tastes good and/or makes you feel better. In fact yesterday when she was first ill we had this awesome fight where she refused to take some Tylenol to bring down the fever and I (being the mature lady that I am) threatened to take her to the hospital instead where they would surely give her an IV and when that didn’t work I told her if she let the fever get to high her brain could boil.
Even though she didn’t believe any of my threats her brother has been going around for about 20 hours now telling people that his sister had brain damage which is kind of a hilarious side effect.
Back to today - we are somewhere in the middle of Tennessee. I am in the car with both children and my Mother-in-Law and Father-in-Law and Claudia has a fever. She is very rosy cheeked and hot. She is sad and has a headache. We decide to stop at the first place we see (in this case a Wal-Mart. Apparently Tennessee is infested with Wal-Marts. Seriously they are omnipresent here.) and we stop to buy something that will help get rid of the headache and fever.
I seriously take her into this Super Wal-Mart and name every single flavor of every single children’s fever medication known to man. She hates them all. We finally decide on some dye-free Tylenol business that she used to take when she was a baby. It seemed that this was the closest to her favorite medicine - stool softener - which is the only medicine that Claudia will take orally.
No. The irony is not lost on me.
We get to the parking lot and Claudia is already crying even though her Grandmother is carrying her. After all three adults try unsuccessfully to get her to drink a teaspoon of medicine that tastes like candy I resort to more threats.
“If you don’t drink that by the time I count to three I am going to walk right back in that store and buy the kind of medicine that goes in your butt.”
And inexplicably she agree to this.
Twenty minutes later, after consulting with pharmacists and being led on wild goose chases by pharmacy techs I return empty handed. While it is very clear what I need it turns out that this particular Wal-Mart doesn’t carry it.
I go back to the car empty handed.* To which Claudia replies, under her breath “How unfortunate.”
MY FOUR YEAR OLD HAS A VERY STRONG GRASP OF SARCASM. She is also quite strong in vocabulary.
As I told Devra years ago (before my own children could talk this well) smartassery begets smartassery.
I have reaped what I have sown. I accidentally taught my four year old daughter to be a sarcastic bitch.
I also accidentally raised someone who would rather have something shoved up her ass than do something much more pleasant against her will.
We are so screwed when she becomes a teenager.
* Where my children were having this argument “She said she choosed the pharmacy.” “No! I said I choosed the suppository!”
