How I Spent New Year's Eve... Eve

Yesterday was beautiful. The kids woke up late. We had a quick breakfast, lounged around for a while, I organized to sell some eggs to some friends because a complete lack of buyers over the Christmas holiday had left me with a vast surplus, and then we headed out. We went to a restaurant for lunch and then took the kids to Border's because I'm a complete book whore and am attempting to make the kids into them, too. Does that make me a book pimp?

When we got to the bookstore, M1 said something about having drunk enough Sierra Mist at the restaurant that he was going to throw up, but he seemed fine and picked out a couple of books - a complete visual encyclopedia of armored war vehicles and "The Phantom Tollbooth" - and so I figured it was nothing.

I wrenched my knee, we delivered eggs, we came home, I read a book while the kids played outside and Oz took down the outside Christmas lights, we watched TV and ate dinner...

And then the boy threw up and the girl freaked out about going to sleep because her nightmares have apparently returned, and while I'm trying to downplay them and give her the mental tools to make them go away on her own, she's still wiggin'. So I got her to go back to bed, and then the boy hurled again.

I didn't know vomit could have a HEIGHT radius. I'd never seen it four feet up a door before. Urp inside door hinges is a complete #*@%^ to clean. Between cleaning floors, doors, and keeping up with the general malaise he felt, it took me till 11 o'clock to get him to sleep.

I breathed a sigh of relief... 30 seconds too soon. The girl woke up and started crying because she thought the bad dreams were going to come get her again. Apparently this particular dream scared the bejeezus out of her, which isn't a good sign because she also got INCREDIBLY clingy at the bookstore when I told her no about something and almost lost her mind when we had company on Friday, which isn't like her at all and reminds me of the rigamarole we went through earlier this year... 2010... with the tantrums and such, and I'm having flashbacks and hoping against hope that this isn't a cycle. However, I got her to smile at the thought of her gerbil named Prince and the kindergarten class guinea pig named Princess talking to each other in Rodent Language, and she went back to sleep.

So I went to sleep.

The boy woke up at 2:13 and yakked on his bed, so I got to pull sheet duty, which was fine until I started the washer and realized that we were nearly out of laundry detergent, which when you have an Urper is NOT GOOD, so then I got to wake Poor Oz up and ask him to go to the store at 3 a.m. to get laundry detergent and Pepto-Bismol (and other stuff, but those were the big things). And he did this for me, which just goes to show how much of a keeper he is.

While he was gone, I tried to go back to sleep, but it was a lost cause. Just as I started to drift off, I heard, "BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP."

[pause]

"BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP."

[pause]

"BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP."

[Expletive] smoke alarm, I thought to myself. So I rolled over to text Oz and let him know that when he stepped in the back door, he'd need to grab some batteries to replace the ones that clearly were dying. Except that my phone refused to turn on. I knew it *had* been working because I'd texted Oz the shopping list half an hour earlier because nobody remembers a shopping list at 3 a.m., but now... nothing. I tried plugging it in, even though it had been charging since I went to bed and should have been fully charged, but nothing happened. I tried turning it off but got no response from that, either. Finally I sighed and decided to go throw the laundry into the dryer, watched a giant flash of lightning light up the bedroom windows, cursed to myself, and headed to the back door just in time to hear Oz finish swapping out the laundry himself.

Did I mention the blasted alarm was still beeping?

Turns out it was the CO detector that was beeping and giving the message "ERR - E09." I have no idea what that means other than that it's probably dead. Of course that couldn't have happened BEFORE Oz went to the store.

Pthththththth.

Oz went to try to sleep on the couch, and I tried to get back to sleep, too, after I doped the boy up on Pepto.

No such luck. There was a storm, for one, and as soon as that was about over, the boy donated the Pepto to the carpet and spent most of the rest of the night huddled in the bathroom in his underwear with the room heater on full blast because he had the chills. The girl got up about 5:15 to use the bathroom. I think the boy and I both sacked out about 6. I don't think Oz slept at all before he left to go help his brothers move into a new apartment, but I woke up at 9 to the girl and the boy talking in the living room, where the girl very much was hungry and the boy very much wasn't.

Gah.

The boy is asleep on the other couch right now. The girl is doing a puzzle and singing and talking nonstop. The man is waking up from a nap. And somewhere from the utility room, the dryer is working on load #5 (load #6 is hanging up to dry). The dishwasher needs to be emptied, too.

The temperature is dropping like a rock outside, and it's getting cloudy again, too. I do believe that New Year's Eve is going to have to be a non-celebration tonight. If this is what 2011 is going to be like, I'm going to crawl under a rock NOW. Wake me for 2012.

More Things the Girl Does

My girl is a barracuda.

She's one black wig and set of rockin' high heels away from being the spitting image of Lucy Liu in "Charlie's Angels" where she pretends to be the efficiency expert in a room full of high-school-mentality men. Know the scene? The one where she whacks her riding crop on a table and the whole room jumps? I giggle every time, right before I get an overwhelming scent of GIRL POWER and feel a little awesome even though my fat duff is the one sitting on the couch doing nothing.

Anyway, my daughter. I told you she had charisma.

Yesterday, she cleaned out her room. She had some stuff to give away and a fairly good-sized sackload of trash. From start to finish, cleaning took her about two hours, and she went through EVERYTHING. (I want her energy.)

Yesterday afternoon, I told the boy to go do the same. He shrieked like I was trying to kill him, but he agreed when I told him he could get back his confiscated-for-two-weeks DS if he completed the chore. (The DS was confiscated because he had been told NO MORE DS and was then caught playing the DS when he told me he was going to be reading a book. Yeah, Lego Indiana Jones does not equal "reading a book." Nice try, Mr. McFly.) Anyway, he has a few more toys than M2, but not much. However, three hours later, I couldn't even get inside the door of his room, it was so blocked with... stuff. He hadn't done anything other than disperse laundry throughout his room and turn on his radio full-blast to drown out the sound of his sister singing. I had known he would be overwhelmed by the job, so I had given him specific tasks, but he hadn't buckled down at all. It was utter chaos.

I didn't get him in trouble, though. Not at all. I just told him that he had to finish the job before we could go somewhere other than running errands this week and invited him to come have dinner.

Today, after running these errands, M2 asked if she could go into M1's room and help him finish the job since he had made essentially no progress before we left the house and really didn't seem motivated to get done any time this year. (I do forget sometimes that the boy really doesn't care if we ever leave the house again.) I said okay but that if I heard bickering, they would be separated instantly and that M1 woud be back on his own. I also agreed to pay M2 five bucks if she could motivate the boy, and he agreed that he would listen to her if she had good ideas.

I figured the plan would backfire, but eh, what the hey, she wanted to try. I'd had no success, so why not try Plan B?

We got home, ate lunch, and the children disappeared into M1's room. The door was left open by design. I went to my room to read and keep a close ear on things, but I could barely concentrate on the book because I kept hearing snippets like, "NO, M1, that doesn't go there!" and "What on earth do you have that for??" and "You can't stop. If you stop working, I stop working." and "No, if we keep moving, Mom promised to read us another chapter, remember?" and "I want my five bucks, so let's get done, okay?"

An hour and a half later, the boy's room was spotless. Everything was sorted and classified, bins were arranged by color (not kidding), everything was put away, and the trash was hauled out.

M2 - 1
M1 - 0
Mom - Flabbergasted

If it wasn't for child labor laws, I'd let the girl out for hire. She has one awesome work ethic. (And I still want her energy.)

On the Third Day of Christmas...

My daughter sang to me...

500 songs or so.

The girl has a singing fetish. I wouldn't find this nearly as annoying if she ever stopped to breathe or at least punctuated the songs with bits of silence, but alas, such is not the case. She's also recently decided that my room is no longer off-limits and that she's invited in whenever her dainty little heart desires, and so I frequently find myself with a bra or shirt or pair of pants half on when a brazen 5-year-old chuffs in with a full head of steam and starts talking and singing for all she's worth.

I usually have to interrupt her with some version of, "Get out! You're not invited! Shoo!" at which time she stares at me with an appalled expression and stalks out like that's what she meant to do in the first place and how DARE I speak to Her Highness that way. And then she returns 45 seconds later with a whole new topic of conversation on the brain.

Tonight, after dinner, she sat on the couch with Daddy and cuddled up. She was in a cuddly mood due to the viewing of her brand-new copy of Tinkerbell, which made her tear up, which I thought was adorable.

Anywho, she cuddled up with Daddy. There was silence for two seconds. Then, "dum dum de dum dum, deee dee dee dum dum... deeeee deeee dee deeeeeeeeee."

Oz turned to her and gave her a tickle. "You just can't stop singing, can you?"

"NOPE!" she proclaimed, and then she danced off to the hall to do... something. I don't know. I do know that it was punctuated with various versions of "The 12 Days of Christmas." My favorite verse went something like this:

"Nine drummers drumming,
Eight drummers drumming,
Nine drummers drumming,
Eight drummers drumming,
Nine drummers drumming.

[slight pause]

"Six geese a-laying."

[slight pause]

"GOOOOOOLLD RIIIIIINGS."

Clearly the girl has mental dialoge going on in her head to fill in the blanks there.

I can tolerate much when it comes to babble and song. Really I can. And I love that she knows these traditional songs.

But I swear if I have to hear the songs from her school play one more time, I just might snap. There's only so much "POOOOOOR, POOOOOR SCROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOGE!" one mom can take before she becomes one herself.

Deeep breathing. One day she'll never sing for me again and I'll miss this.

Then again, if I've truly become Scrooge, maybe I won't.

P.S. She's still wearing the kitten hat. She has accompanied it this evening with pink and orange floral pajamas, a white and purple scarf, and yellow dress socks. Thought you'd want to know.

G'night!

The Christmas (Part 1)

How was Christmas? We'll let's see. I've learned some things. The big thing I've learned is that anticipation isn't the worst part. Not by a long shot. It makes the kids nuts, but it doesn't wear them out and cause a massive case of sensory overload. Thankfully, M2 isn't too bad about that; she's an extrovert. M1, on the other hand, has told us it's bedtime REALLY early the past few nights because he is SO done. Bless his heart. Not that he's had bad days. It's just been constantly busy, and that takes a toll quickly on my poor boy.

He and Oz went up to Kansas on a fudge... I mean, Grandma-fetching mission on Thursday while the girl and I cleaned the house, made dinner, Parker House rolls (during the making of which I discovered my yeast was dead, which was a whole mess in and of itself), and gluten-free muffins. Grandma spent the night, which meant that I slept in the boy's bed while he kicked me with socked feet all night long and M2 shared a bed with Oz, and then we got up on Christmas Eve Day to greet...

Granny, who was bringing up the roast turkey that needed to be heated. She also brought up gifts, of course, and two boxes of rice pilaf-esque 'stuffing.'

Then my sister and her husband showed up [note the cheesy grins that she and my mom share? I hereby promise never to do the cheesy grin thing again in a photo. I might resemble my family and OMG who wants that?? ;) ]

We ate till we couldn't eat any more, and then we adjourned to open gifts.

My sister made these hats for the kids. You can't really see it too well on this shot of M2, because she'd much rather show off the chocolate-dipped pretzel than the hat, even though she's barely taken off the hat since she got it, but it has a cute pink nose and whiskers and gray/pink ears and looks remarkably like a kitten.

M1's looks like a wolf. Except in this shot, where it resembles a turban and makes him look like he's meditating, which he's not. He's mentally telling me to go take a hike with the camera. He doesn't like having photos taken of himself these days. *sigh* The teen years are sneaking up.

One of the best gifts of all Christmas, though, was this GO-CART. My grandmother bought it for them. It's electric, and it's not going to be something they can take out in the pasture, but it's got some speed to it, and they love it. Totally friggin' awesome. My mom and I discussed the go-cart while we did dishes later and wondered why we never got anything that cool when we were kids! (Answer: We were girls and technically the go-cart is Michael's but I'm not telling the kids that EVER. Gender roles don't come into play when there's a go-cart involved.)

We even rounded out the day with a family rendition of Beatles RockBand. Because who doesn't love a little "Yellow Submarine" at Christmas? And don't worry. We didn't leave M2 out. She commandeered the drums at one point and then found her niche at the mic and wouldn't let it go for anything short of guests leaving.

What a day.

Then Santa paid a visit, and we started all over again!

M2 got a bike she'd been wanting for ages (a tricycle doesn't really cut it when you're 4 feet tall and almost 6).

M1 got a box.

That contained another box.

And the second box contained a netbook.

Boy is spoiled.

I love this shot because the Christmas ornament I got for M1 was entitled "The Magic of Believing." Since this has been the Christmas he learned the "truth" about Santa, I wanted him to have this. I think he got it.


"Mom, do you have to take photos of us eating breakfast?"

It's been quite a day. We visited my in-laws and M1 came home with a 'dig your own rocks' kit and promptly started digging up rocks. On his bed. And when Oz and I made him move the gear to his desk, it became clear that it was bedtime. M2 didn't want to go to bed, either, since she'd just broken out her brand-new art set, but I assured them both that there would be time for that tomorrow.

Thank heaven my dad and his wife are in Hawai'i for Christmas! I don't think I could take another round! I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas and will join me in starting a new diet tomorrow!

In Which I Realize...

I'm definitely not Tiny Tim. I'm not even the Ghost of Christmas Past. I *might* be the Ghost of Christmas Present, assuming I'm the version from "Scrooged" starring the ever-lovable Bill Murray, 'cause dang, that girl kicks... everything. But she's annoying. I dunno, maybe I am, too. I have once been portrayed as the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, and that was awesome, but I don't think I could fit into that gear any more, even in a cartoon form.

Don't ask.

I'm about one step away from Bah, Humbug.

Don't get me wrong. I love Christmas and tradition and seeing the kids get excited.

I love it when Oz goes up to get my grandmother from my teensy tinsey town in Kansas and picks me up over 2 lbs. of homemade fudge from the drug store for something like $10 and there are four different flavors in the box. Hello, Peanut Butter Fudge. I can see you and my waistline are going to be GREAT friends.

I even love seeing the tree twinkle and watching the lights come on outside every night.

BUT. The shopping. The people. The pressure I put on myself for every holiday to be perfect. It eats me alive, and I wind up at some point during the holiday hating Christmas.

Argh.

I have to let go so that future Christmases aren't like that, but I'm not sure how. Right now I'm relaxing with fudge, wine, and a good friend. It's a start. Later I'm going to dope up the tree with gifts and sleep off my grandmother's visit.

And on that slightly somber note, have a VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS, EVERYONE!!! (And I mean that from the bottom of my heart in the 'I know what it's like to NOT have a Merry Christmas so REALLY have a good one' kind of way!)

Kids vs. Fire

No, my kids didn't set anything on fire. I'm reasonably sure the boy would only do that if it occurred to him to use fire to conduct an experiment, and the girl wouldn't do it unless she was deliberately trying to kill me.

Don't ask how I know.

Anyway, all is well around here. When the children checked the Christmas chain this morning, it suggested that we "dress up and go out to eat."

The children spent a good 30 minutes bickering with one another about where to go. "Let's go eat Mexican!" "NO, Italian!" "No, I want fish! Red Lobster is the best restaurant ever!" "No, I want to go eat hamburgers, not fish! Mommy, Mommy, a hamburger is the ONLY thing I want. I'm not going to a stinky fish place!"

You get the idea. It was one of those times when Mommy has to step in and say, "OH MY GOD WILL YOU BOTH SHUT UP ALREADY!!!!"

OK, so I didn't actually say that, but I thought it really, really hard. In reality, I told them to hush or we wouldn't go anywhere at all.

I love making threats like that three days before Christmas because the Santa card isn't playing any more, especially with the boy. "Mom, we know the presents are already made. We've been good enough. And I've never met anyone who's gotten sticks." (At this point I mutter to myself something about him being the first. This is the boy who, when Oz and I were going over details regarding Lifestyles of the Incarcerated, didn't believe us and now wants to take a tour of the jail just to see if we're really right about all the surveillance and cheap food.)

I busted out the phone and started going through a list of restaurants and came across one that's a local version of a Benihana. It had been years since Oz and I had been there. The kids had never been. So Oz called and made reservations, and we got dressed in clothes that didn't have stains or holes (and M2 threw a fit because I made her put her boots inside her bootcut jeans and nobody was going to see the decoration, Mama) and off we went.

We were seated with two couples. We had a relatively young chef. And when he wrote the word "OIL" in oil on the griddle and lit it on fire, M1 nearly flew backward out of his seat. Thank heaven there was a wall behind him.

When he recovered, he rubbed his face and said, "He wrote the word oil, Mom... with oil."

"That's right," I said, impressed that he could read upside down.

He enjoyed the food and really liked watching the performance, up till the time when the chef created the onion stack and filled that with oil and drew a line across the griddle and lit the whole thing on fire again. I think he would have dove under the table if there had been a hole to dive into.

"Was that cool?" I asked him as he stared at me, owl-eyed.

"No. Do I have eyebrows? That was too close and too hot."

M2, on the other hand, laughed at his concerns. She promptly chirped, "THAT WAS COOL!!!"

Is it wrong that I agree with my girl on this one? There's just something about fire...

Oh, Good Grief

Every year I swear I'm going to get a handle on the holidays and have things done early and plan ahead and make sure everything possible is done WELL BEFORE the children get out of school and take over the house in what has to be the most remarkable impression of the term Chaos I've ever seen in my life. (What gets my goat is that they don't do this during summer; only during winter break does the house officially turn into a haven for stray Nerf bullets and dinosaur bones and heaven only knows what else... I'm honestly scared to look.)

And every year something happens.

This year, I thought I was doing fantastic. I ordered the last big Christmas gift for the kids in October. During the last week of November, I ordered the last gift for Oz.

And during the second week of December, he went out and bought himself the same gift.

REALLY?!?!?!?!?

Now, he claims that he told me he was buying it and that I was playing a game on my phone at the time (probably Angry Birds Seasons because if there's anything better than Angry Birds, it's Angry Birds plowing through snow and Christmas presents like... well... like my children), and he should know that if I'm attempting to calculate the precise angle at which I should aim a bird at a particular green pig that I'm not really paying any attention to him, especially if the TV is on, which it was, and I can even tell you that it was Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. See? My memory isn't that bad. I just can't focus on the sound of his voice. And he can't fault me for that, because I can't even tell you how many times he's tuned me out, so it's my turn, dangit.

I don't have ADHD. I just have...



SQUIRREL!

Moving on. A box arrived from a particular ginormous online retailer who shall remain nameless but whose might start with A, and when Oz opened up the box and pulled out the contents and unwrapped them, I began mentally cursing.

Because it meant I wasn't done. He undid my beautiful early planning! Curses!

The children and I are now in cahoots. Plotting against Daddy is one of their favorite exercises. It's a Domination thing.

And I must say, they're remarkably good at it.

Merry Christmas, Sweetheart.

Sanctimonious

I have been looking for an adjective to properly describe my daughter for... well... EVER. My husband came up with this one today. Sanctimonious.

It's true. She truly believes the world revolves around her and that she's always right. She usually behaves very well and often is right, but that's not the point.

Let me illustrate.

I was admiring the jeans that I bought for her back at the beginning of fall when I realized she had outgrown every single pair of jeans that she had been able to wear in spring. I had found some jeans that fit her amazingly well - i.e. they don't display copious amounts of buttcrack and don't have decorations all over them (thus making them multi-outfit-oriented, and any mom of girls knows that it's darn near impossible to find these), so I bought her something like four pairs. Anyway, the girl heard me being happy with my purchase and decided I needed to be taken down a few notches.

"I don't like these jeans. I just wear them because they're in my drawer. I don't like them because they're just blue."

"Oh? Well, almost all jeans are blue. What color would you rather have them be?"

"Pink. And I think on Wednesday you should sew me pink jeans."

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA....

I do not sew. Period. Oz has to repair all button casualties around here because I'm actually that incompetent with a needle unless there's a cross-stitch canvas involved.

Then talk switched over to Christmas when I dared to ask her if she was excited.

"No.. I don't want gifts."

"You don't??"

"No. I don't care about toys. I don't like toys. I don't want anything. I just want pink jeans."

Oh, my.

This all comes after I caught her chewing out her best friend after the Christmas recital at the school the other day. Nothing like seeing your 5-year-old rip a new one into another student right in front of an altar. I still don't know what that was about, and she doesn't remember. Clearly it was life-altering. She also lit into her brother this morning after he dared to preempt her reading of the daily Christmas chain AND after he had apologized for doing so.

She doesn't let things go easily.

Sanctimonious.

Oz and I are wondering if there's a nunnery that will accept her now. Though when we asked her if she wanted to become a Sister like her teacher (who is a wonderful, wonderful person), she was quite okay with that.

I haven't yet told her they can't wear jeans... or pink. I'll save myself the lecture and tell her another day.

Recital Season

'Tis the season...

For recitals.

Fa-la-la and all that jazz.

M1 doesn't have recitals. He's quite happy about this. The closest he came this year was a commercial that he wrote, directed, and performed in. I'll post that in a day or two.

M2, however, loves recitals. She gets incredibly excited about the notion of showing off to anyone. Whoda thunk??

We started at the beginning of the month with her violin recital.

I love to brag on her and her violin skillz. She's no prodigy, but for a 5-year-old, I think she does pretty well! She's the youngest in her group by a couple of years, but she keeps up admirably.

The concert was roughly divided by skill level. They started with the easy stuff, then she and her groupmates and the brand-spankin'-new students sat down while the older kids played a few songs, and then there were a few songs at the end that she also knew, Jingle Bells being one of them.

I loved watching her stand up there with the 'big kids' when not everyone in her group was. I try not to be one of 'those' parents, but sometimes I get a little carried away when I talk about her. She simply amazes me, and I love watching her learn.

Then we had her school play/concert on Thursday.


Mom, do we *have* to be here??

Yes, Son. And you will live.

That's my girl there in the front row in her new Christmas dress with a sheep 'costume' over it. She's supposed to be wearing a hat like the little boy next to her, but she decided she didn't want to because it might mess up her hair. She's nothing if not vain! All the kids in the front row are her classmates, and everyone did a fantastic job. It was the best play I've seen the school do.

This is her in her non-speaking role as sheep. Hence the hat she was supposed to wear. I wish I had gotten a shot of the little boy in her class who had a solo and stole the entire show, but I didn't. Let's just say he got a standing ovation all to himself. He's truly a cutie.

And the best part of it all?

She didn't cry once!

Gingerbread: A Study in Contrasts

Decorating gingerbread creations isn't necessarily an annual tradition around here, but it was one of the things on The List when we created our Christmas Countdown Chain, so there ya go. Except I decided to go with trees instead of houses because A) they take up less space and B) they're not as complicated, which agrees with M1 just fine.

You'll see what I mean in a minute.

I got the boxes out. I made the first batch of powdered royal icing from the packet that came with the kit. I inwardly rejoiced at my wisdom to buy a kit because I wouldn't have to clean icing tips, which is a pain in the backside at the best of times. And I let the kids have at it.

And then I reveled in the glory of my children's unique and highly individualized personalities.

M1 took to decorating with relish. He decided he was going to create stripes, stripes, and more stripes on his. "M1, did you forget there's also green icing?"

[pause]

"Oh, yeah..."

(For the record, his tree has a single green stripe. The End.)

M2 had to make everything JUST SO. And by Just So, I mean that everything had to line up perfectly and all dots had to be of equal size. If they didn't meet standards, they were scraped off and reapplied.

M1 enjoyed the scrape and reapply part, though for a slightly different reason...

M2's candy had to be meticulously applied, and when she accidentally dropped a purple candy where a yellow was supposed to go... well, you get the idea.

M1 did not share this need. For him, the idea was to stick as many candies as possible on one gingerbread tree. When M2 got done with hers and had leftover candy, he pounced. "Can I have it?

"Okay... wait. Mom, is this a nice thing?"

"Yes, dear."

"Okay, M1, you can have it. I'm doing a nice thing by letting you have these instead of eating them, you know."

*grunt from the boy as he continues to coat his tree in candy*

*forehead smack from the mom*

See the differences? Even their clothes tell a story. M1 wouldn't be caught dead in short sleeves after Labor Day; M2 believes her short sleeves are a statement all their own.

And when we all got done, M2 insisted on posing for a picture with her creation. M1? He bailed. Lickety-split down the hall before I could even ask if he wanted to do the same.

Ah, well. Christmas traditions are nothing if not great for laughs!