Imagination Vacation

...I so need one.  The majority of our playtime these days revolves around Emmy's very vivid imagination, which is great and healthy and I really appreciate it, most of the time.  There is a constant rotation of "pretend" games she likes to play each day.  The current cycle includes:  pretend birthday party, pretend doctor/dentist check-up, pretend school day, pretend Mom's sick (which is my personal favorite as it entails me having to lay in bed in the dark while Emmy brings me random things from around the house to "make me feel better" - yay!  The not so fun part of that one is that Rosa is usually in bed with me, where she finds it most fun to head-butt me repeatedly like a baby goat, or smack me on both sides of the face gleefully like I imagine an overly enthusiastic uncle would do to his favorite nephew to congratulate him for becoming a "man" at his bar mitzvah)...  And then there is pretend "shhh Santa is coming".  Oh sweet Lord in Heaven how I hate this game.  I think it is mostly based on my unexplainable loathing for celebrating any holiday outside of its' given month.  The game starts with us hiding so that "Santa won't see us", and then we run out, surprised to find all of the gifts that Santa has left for us.  We then have to pretend open each one, detailing what we got and pretend play with it, but then wait..."shh, Santa is coming back, we better hide", and it all starts again ad nauseam.  I've tried everything to get out of this game. "Let's play pretend Easter Bunny is coming", "How about "shhh, Cupid is coming".  I've even tried to convince her that I got an email from Santa's elves explaining that he is sick and doesn't want to play pretend today.  Nothing works.  I'm stuck with it.  Which is why I also need to play "pretend Mommy's making a cocktail".  Merry Merry!

Really, I've pulled out all the stops...