Merry Merry

I  hope whatever it is you celebrate this time of year was as awesome as ours.

Wish List

Dear Santa,

For Christmas this year, please bring toys that occupy my kids.  Also I'd like a black cover for my phone, booze, and a very expensive hair cut.

Love,
Jenny

On Strictness

I read this question about how strict you are as a parent and if you give in all the time or not and I will confess that I have no consistency when enforcing rules.

Sometimes all the whining and kicking reinforces my resolve to make Bratty McBraterson sit in the designated make shift jail cell complete with invisible bars, until she can speak like a human again and sometimes her feelings get really hurt and the genuine quiet sobbing melts my warden-like heart into puddles of come over here and let me wrap you up in my arms and hug you until we both feel better. Then there's the third and laziest option in which I haven't had enough sleep or am just worn down by the insaness of housing a kindergartner and can only find the energy to wave my hand in her direction and utter a faint "chill out" while pretending I don't know that she is emptying the bathtub one dolphin spit at a time onto the floor.

I think the desired result is a very confusing dance in which it's hard to tell when I'm serious and when I'm not. I'd like to think I'm aiding in the rearing of a little lawyer who will argue her case every time, exploring any loophole or chink in the defense to finagle her plan into fruition, a child who's spirit is strong and who isn't afraid to challenge authority. I don't know about the future but what is happening in the present is this; when I'm really at my limit I have to get the serious mommy voice out and sometimes throw in a swear word. Thus the following conversation:

Ella: Mom, you could open this present I made for you today if you want to.

Me: No, I'll wait until Christmas.

Ella: I'm sure the other moms opened theirs already.

Me: That may be, but I am no "other mom," I am an extra special mom and I can be patient.

Ella: Please?

Me: Nope, I'll wait until Christmas

Ella: Pleeeeeeaaaaaaaaaase! You will love it.

Me: If we open presents before Christmas Santa will be upset that we didn't wait

Ella: Please?

Me: No

Ella: Please?

Me: No!

Ella: PleeEEeeEEeeeEEEAAAaaaase?

Me: Do you wanna piss Santa off?

Ella: ok. (walks away)

I know I'm setting myself up for the worst teenage years in the history of teenagers, but I prefer to live in denial and tell myself that we'll be best pals and tell each other everything all open and honest and lovingly for our whole lives including when she's 16 and wants to go to Mexico for the weekend with her two wild best friends and why can't I just trust her to do that?!

Getting it all done

I'm still here. We're getting ready to bust out on the Christmas soon. This year we'll get a real tree and I'm going to try and send a real Christmas letter since we had so much happen this year (wish me luck on getting that together) and I took Ella to see Santa already. She got nervous and told him she wanted a basket and when he asked her what she wanted in it she told him eggs of different colors. He let out the most genuine ho ho ho he he haw I ever heard from Santa and said he was gonna write that down it was soo good. Then he added that he knew a bunny that may be able to help him with that order. When we left Ella exclaimed "Santa is Amazing!" Yes kiddo, he certainly is.

The Family that Games Together

We went and did Dan's extended family Christmas party yesterday which devolves into an impromptu poker party every time. I love it. We spent the first hour catching up, eating ham, cheesy potatoes and chocolates while looking at family photos and then next hour opening presents from the gift exchange and the last three hours playing Texas Hold 'Em with cousins we haven't seen in months. My only complaint is that Dan's uncle can tell what I've got in my hand all the time. He says things like "How ya like those tens?" and sure as shit that's what I have! It's a little unerving to try and pretend that's exactly what I don't have when he can call me out so compleatly. Despite his x-ray vision, I usually do pretty good. I can almost always make it to the final table and alot of times the final three but that's where it ends. I need to spend some time learning the patterns of betting so I can make him think I have a pair of tens when all I have is seven two. Then I can be the champion of the family Christas party and next I'll move on to the tournements at the Ramada and then World Poker Tour here I come!

On the Second Day

Here I sit in the midst of our three Days of Christmas, trappings and bits and bobbles all over the floor and sticky dishes on the table. Kiddo is vegging out in front of the TV I haven't let her turn on in two days and my dearest is back at work leaving me to wrap the remainder of the presents and make the orange jello salad for the party tonight. Later we'll have martinis and hot toddies at the bar in the basement and when we've sufficiently taken the edge off (whatever that means) we'll convene to the living room and there will be cousins, the crackling fire, presents, glee and bits of wrapping paper flying all over the place while adults hurl "Don't get it out of the box right now you'll loose the pieces" at the kids. Yes, it feels like I'm stuck in the 50s today with all the cooking, cleaning, child rearing and homemaking and to make it worse I am actually hoping to get some sewing done today.

Merry Christmas Internet!

From the Mermaid that lives here and her Mom, Dad, Dog and pet lobster.

Anticipation

Ella Got a Message from the North Pole.

Click here to view.

I Didn't Send This Christmas Card Either

Dear Santa, I Like Christmas but I'm Really Bad at the Presents Part

I went to four stores and in total purchased two things. I fail as a shopper. I just can't get excited about the giant universal remote larger than your head and nose/ear hair clippers with the car dashboard adapter (and who wants to clip their nose hairs with something that's just been in their ear and vice versa, and in the car!) I have some ideas of what I'm looking for now and also have the sneaking feeling I may need to get ordering on the internet to actually find it all.

I'm not even sure what I want for Christmas, perhaps a winning sold out roller derby season and a closet. The first is self explanatory and the second well, as I think I may have said before, we live in a old place and there are very few closets. We own wardrobes and dressers but oh how I yearn for one more place to put my stuff and a door to shut it on. When people come over, often times my sewing machine is right there and my roller skates are right there and the birthday wrapping paper, scissors and tape right there. Everything we own is out all the time ready for you to look at right now. It presents a particular problem when children come over and I have to answer "What's this?" five kabillion times... "It's a lint shaver.... That? it's an egg timer.... oh that, it's a box of dice... it's my flash drive." all the while I'm wishing I had a place to put them so that the child wasn't touching it and I wasn't explaining what it is and why they can't play pirates with it.

It's not that we're cluttered (well, actually we are) but I'm going to maintain we would put these things away if we had a place to put them. Perhaps this is what has me hesitant to buy anything new for Christmas. I mean really where will we put another Thing? We been just fine without another Thing. Maybe Santa could just bring me Niecy Nash. She and her cohorts can come over and be appalled at my hot mess and tell me to put at least 15 pairs of black shoes in a garage sale and pare the toys and books down by half and then send us to the Clocktower while they save my space. Yes, that sounds good.

Dear Santa,

All I want for Christmas is for my skatey ladies to kick some butt this season and Niecy Nash to come over my house and be soo appalled she wants to clean it.

Also, I've been very good.

Love,
Me

PS The usual wishes still apply, good health, world peace, million dollars etc...

Tis the Season

The festivities have started in an attempt to forget that it gets dark just after lunch and the temperature is steadily at freezing you ass off. Today the sun is out, the sky is blue, my pretend stocks are up and I'll be out doing a little shopping tonight. I have no idea what I'm hoping to find while out shopping but I'm going to give it an honest try while sorting through all the automatic gadget winders, designer custom knitted nose warmers and the dust catching home collection accessories. We put the tree up last weekend and I've almost finished rotating the ladder and getting all the ornaments up. I swear next year I'm getting a confetti gun and loading it with hard candy and just aiming at the tree. There's eggnog and Tom & Jerry mix in the fridge and brandy in the cupboard to get rid of the shakes after I've almost tipped the ladder over while standing on the top, which would really explain why it's taking an entire week to get this tree together, and we are happy for the season.

I hope you and your house are keeping warm and cozy this season dear internets.

Something Had to Give

Dear Friends and Family,

No, you didn’t drop off my Holiday card list, I didn’t send any (gasp!) Not a single one. Dan and Ella made them and stamped them; I just didn’t sign them or send them. They would’ve said we had a fabulous year and Ella is loving preschool and Dan loves his new job and I love my new roller derby league. I also would’ve included a picture of our family that makes us all look adorably cute. Instead I sat home and drank hot coco with a little Irish in it while we watched Disney DVDs and ate popcorn. I feel kinda bad, but something had to give this year and the good news is next year I’ll have a jump start!

Full of excuses but less stressed,
Jenny

Celia Rivenbark, I Think I Love You

Yesterday, I received a hilarious book by author Celia Rivenbark, "Stop Dressing Your Six-Year-Old Like a Skank." The first chapter details a trip to Disneyland fulfilling her family's utter craving for "total escape and plastic happiness." I was laughing so hard in the first three pages I had to read it aloud to Dan. She also wrote "Bless Your Heart, Tamp" and "We're Just Like You, Only Prettier" which I will probably order this week as I'll be finished with the first book this afternoon and together they'll have enough snark in them to balance out all the gooey sweetness of the holidays.

Excerpt here or if you prefer your funny in smaller daily chunks, Celia's column is here.

Merry Christmas Eve Internets!

Last week I bravely accepted an internet dance challenge agreeing to post a home made video of Biz Markie's "Just a Friend". Little did know at the time, it's a four minute song and so I asked to amend the challenge to include friends and family (thank God.) A handfull of my friends helped saved my ass from jerking around wildly trying to dance for four minutes by giving me the best gift I could get this season - their own dancing on video, and so now without further ado I present to you...

The best thing you'll see in the internet today...

Blink

I have an infinite list of tasks to accomplish in the next five days and my eye has begun to twitch in that way that if I were in a combat situation my peers might start avoiding me and whispering behind my back. Instead I find myself standing in line next to seven other housewives with the thousand-yard stare, and no one knows for sure if they are spotting something down isle 15 on sale, or ready to disembowel the next person that asks them if they’re all ready for Christmas. Even the children sense something very dangerous brewing deep within their mothers, not daring to whimper or whine for checkout isle candy. Ella seems in her own world all together humming quietly to herself and playing with the thread slowly unraveling from my sleeve. She sleeps in the car and while I carry her into the house, thankfully allowing me to get cargo in the backdoor unencumbered. Now, I sip an instant coffee in front of my blog, a few spare minutes alone, planning to put homemade chicken pie in the oven, while the curser blinks back at me… blink… blink… blink…

Concentration

"Santa will be so proud of my snow man faces."

-Ella Dec. 2007

The Adventures of Bat Girl

So we had a full holiday weekend. It kicked off with a Christmas program of eighteen 3 and 4 year olds fidgeting their way through Five Little Snow Men and a grand finally of We Wish you a Merry Christmas complete with giant arm swishes. I of course, took lots of pictures and videoed 30 seconds of the 5 minute program and then I secretly videoed all the parents’ videoing. We were parodies of ourselves, the mama-razzi lined up in front of the children yelling Paris! Paris! Over here! What are you wearing today? I felt really silly after that and couldn’t bring myself to record any more and lowered the glass eye and just watched her through my own squishy organic eyes.

I often wonder if Ella is going to be utterly embarrassed by my documentation of her life. It’s why you see a glaring absence in the potty training posts, though it would’ve made great blog-fodder. It’s bad enough when your Grandma shows your butt pics to your fiancé can you imagine having the procedure in which you were toilet trained outlined for the populace of the world, or at least the 40 or so people who read your Mom’s blog? Besides, I’m sure I’ll give Ella plenty of reason to be utterly embarrassed with all that driving her to school in my PJs with my hair in pigtails and my striped derby socks and glasses on.

I digress.

So, after the school program, we hopped through the snow and across the street to the local drinkery and had hot cocoas, beer and fried things for lunch. Ella’s uncles were unexpectedly sitting at the next table over playing Euchre and so when she tired of eating fried cheese and poking things with those little plastic swords she popped over to the next table to ask the fellas about their cards while we finished off the last of the beer and paid the bill. The rest of the afternoon was spent at Granny’s visiting with cousins and taking pictures of snowflakes and the evening spent with friends playing cards and romping in front of the warm glow of holiday TV.

Ella doesn’t get to wrestle around with boys very often and so when they would get particularly wound up, the boys wrestling around wildly, Ella would shriek with laughter and jump in the middle scaring Mrs. Hostess into putting her cards down and yelling into the other room “You boys better tone it down a notch and be gentle!” and I would shake my head and say “It’s ok, she’s having a blast.” It was nice to sit in a warm dinning room with a table full of chips and chocolate and cookies and wine and share stories with old friends and their families while the kids tried hard to bust their heads on the coffee table. It reminded me of all the wonderful people my parents played cards with and their children.

Pictured left to right:

Wolverine, Super Ninja & Bat Girl just before they put their jammies on.

December 1st

It is finally December and I can give in and let Christmas descend upon us. Little town’s Christmas walk is today and we are in the thick of it having volunteered to read books and make ornaments with the kids today to hang on the tree they’ll put up at village hall. We are looking forward to a few inches of snow this afternoon as Ella’s new snow boots have yet to tromp through anything more glorious than cold wet leaves and to his relief Dan can put the tree up. I have coupons to spend and need a place to put my wrapped presents. This year the magic that flows from Ella’s head has swirled around our whole house and we find ourselves in the first Christmas where Santa Clause plays a central role. Where elves whole heartedly peep in on us from the snow globe at the north pole to make sure we’ve all eaten our veggies and washed up for bed and where wishes are easily granted if only you refrain from pouting. Hark the Harold Angels sing – the month of magic and miracles is here.