The Perfect Bribe

I'm not above bribing my kids. If I can get them to do something that will make life easier for me and them, I'm all about it, to a certain point anyway. If that makes me a bad parent, oh well. Last Monday morning when I was fixing Sarah's hair for school, she out of the blue asked if she could get her ears pierced. A light bulb went on in my head, and I said, "Yes, if you will go to school everyday this week and be happy, we will get your ears pierced on Friday." She agreed, and was as happy as she could be as she got out of the van when I dropped them off. She even turned around and gave me a huge smile and waved as I was driving away. It was so cute. She did the same each day, only complaining about not wanting to got to school on Tuesday a little when we had a disagreement about which shoes she needed to wear for PE. I reminded her about getting her ears pierced and she straightened up. She was great the rest of the week. So when I picked them up on Friday, the first thing she asked when she got in the van was "Are we going to get my ears pierced now?" So we headed to Walmart, which turned out to be a huge mistake. They didn't have anyone there that could pierce her ears. So we started to leave and she started to have a breakdown. I told her we could buy one of the kits and do it at home, and she wanted to do that. So I went back inside to buy a kit, but they didn't know where they were. So she starts to cry again. We were supposed to take the girls over to Kent and Johnice's so Aaron and I could go meet some friends for dinner in Lake Charles, so we didn't have time to take her anywhere else. We finally got her to agree to let us go on our date, and then on our way home we would pick up the earrings and a kit to do it ourselves when we got back. So after we get back to Kent and Johnice's, we show Sarah the earrings and start to get everything ready to pierce her ears. We even bought two kits so we could do both ears at the same time. We got as far as marking her ears before she said she didn't want to do it. We tried to talk her into it, but she kept saying that she wasn't ready and that she needed more time to get ready. She said, "Maybe tomorrow I'll be ready." And we're still waiting. At least she's going to school and she's happy, even without pierced ears.