Day 4 of Pea’s ear infection and we are finally getting kind of close to seeing the end of this thing. It’s been brutal. Her sleep, which was finally on track, has just gone to hell. She snores so loudly we can hear her all the way upstairs. She cries in her sleep, she’s thrown up in her sleep, she refuses to eat anything but popsicles, getting her to take medicine, up until this morning, has been a major feat which takes not one but two grown-up sets of hands, one of which belongs to a man who is 6 foot 1 inch. And the snot. My God, the snot. It is everywhere. Everywhere.

A long, long time ago, my husband overheard me bargaining with Pea to get her to do something. You know, telling her if she did ‘x’ she could have ‘y.’ He didn’t like it. Not a bit. Actually called me out on it. Asked me not to do that any longer, please don’t bribe our child. So I stopped. Actually, I told him I stopped. But I didn’t. I’m sorry, but when you are with a kid all day every day, it’s going to happen. You are bound to give them that extra cookie. Or the extra book before bed. Or the extra… anything. Right? RIGHT? Or… oh my God, am I seriously the only person out there who does this?

Well, he’s eating those words now. Because after several days of pinning her down, holding her mouth open and shooting her medicine into the back of her throat only to end up wearing it ourselves, I got smart. I unwrapped a popsicle, held it up in front of her alongside her little cap of medicine, and told her if she took her medicine on her own, the popsicle was all hers. And she grabbed that little cap of sticky pink medicine and took it. Like a mini shot glass, she slammed it, grabbed the popsicle and wandered off, delirious in her satisfaction that she had pulled one over on us.

Popsicle guts, all over Pea’s shirt. Yum.