How Much Is That Baby In The Window?

Last night I was nursing Mara. Cristin, the 6 year old saw that I was immobilized and determined that it was a great time to hit me up for stuff.

She sat herself down on the coffee table, directly across from me, and opened the Target circular to an add for an gingerbread house.

"Hey mom I really want to get this gingerbread house. It is a really good deal."

"I don't think so."

"But mom look at the icing, and all the candies. I would love to put this gingerbread house together."

At this point I realized she was drawing on all the sales talent passed genetically from her father unto her and was going to attempt a hard close. I decided to use this opportunity to combine a lesson about being thankful with a lesson of fiscal responsibility.

"Cristin remember how we talked before how in this family we conserve our money and do not go into debt to pay for things."

"Yes."

"Well we have already bought all of your Christmas presents, and while you will have just as nice a Christmas as usual we aren't going to be buying more stuff at this point, so you need to stop asking. I want you to focus on the the fact that you got the greatest gift of all this year and that is your baby sister. I mean, how many of your friends got a baby sister this year?"

"Well none but still this is a nice gingerbread house."

"It is but we need to conserve our money because we will have a lot of bills from your baby sister's birth."

"YOU MEAN YOU HAD TO BUY MARA!!!!!!!!!"



Oh yes she did think that. At this point I had to backpeddle and explain what hospital bills were and how they were expensive and while we didn't have to buy Mara, getting her here cost us a lot. In the end I saved it from being a parenting fail, but it took a lot of backpeddling.