Take your medicine like a 7 month old

Sam came back from our last trip with an ear infection that required antibiotics be given to him orally. The doctor told us that the easiest way to administer them was to put a syringe in the corner of his mouth and squirt it into his cheek. Well, Sam did not like this at all and was very resourceful in making it difficult. He invented the following ways to stop medicine from getting into his mouth:

1. Tongue blocker - moving his tongue to block the incoming stream of medicine.
2. Tongue blocker 2 - open his mouth just a little, but keep the tongue blocking the small opening.
3. The Head Flail - moving his head from side to side to make it difficult for us to aim
4. The Straight Arm- putting his arms straight out and hitting our hands as we attempted to get close to his mouth.
5. The inflated face block - Sam would inflate his cheeks and pucker his lips to let us know we weren't putting anything into his mouth.
   

And of course all this was accompanied by lots of wailing.

So I found a way that was much easier and fun as well for all of us. I would make funny faces at Sam until he would laugh. As soon as he opened his mouth, I would shoot medicine in from 3 inches away, which would invariably surprise him, but never seemed to upset him. We would wait until he swallowed this portion of his medicine, and then repeat until he had taken his required dosage. This routine made taking medicine almost fun....almost. But today he's done, so hopefully it won't be an issue again for a while.