Christmas logic can last all year, you know.

On Christmas Day, I ate some eggnog scones we ordered from a bakery we love. I remembered tonight, at what felt like the 14th restaurant meal in two days, why we don't order from that bakery more often. Eggnog Scones or a glorious loaf of Pumpkin-Chocolate Chip Bread (read: CAKE. Yummy, yummy cake) seem innocent enough on their own, but when combined with the anti-logic that is the holiday spirit around our house, a simple scone with Christmas Brunch quickly turns into an extra roll or three at Christmas Dinner, which quickly turns into a few cookies before bed that night, which quickly turns into a five-pound bag of sugar for breakfast the next morning and seven or eight tons of fried cheese for lunch, not to mention the harmless few bottles of Bailey's Irish Cream, because it's Christmas! Everything is justifiable!

The kids could be whining at a volume level of SOMEONE IS IMPALING ME and my nostrils would flare in anger as I brought another bite of something lard-filled to my mouth and John would look at me imploringly and say, "oh, let them have the chainsaw. It's Christmas!" It was this same logic and attitude that led to an inordinate amount of money (post-Christmas presents) being spent in an inordinate amount of time (post-Christmas). (Note to self: Do not take vacations and stay home with sugar and alcohol anymore. You will be broke within 2.5 days.) Looking back on this phenomenon, I can't even say what started it all. Oh, sure, I could blame it on John's perfected psychological torture method - the method whose very nature requires that he deny its existence, because it consists of months worth of planning and careful product placement and orchestrated scenarios involving coincidences that would never occur in real life, all so he can present his case for a brand new ridiculously expensive gaming/networking system in the most seemingly innocuous and un-obvious ways so as not to incur the famous Wrath of Kristen, that impenetrable force of logic and practicality that always, without fail, shuts down any idea that involves fun, money, or frivolity. But as it turns out, when I'm in a sugar coma, distracted by flighty, crazy in-laws and said in-laws' kids and also my own ceaselessly moving, screaming, demanding children, John's psychological torture method is quite effective - and I'm not sure if that says more about the method, or about how I just publicly declared my weak spot to my nemesis.

Once I'd acquiesced to the technology playground for our house, a new set of bedroom furniture for the kids seemed a perfectly acceptable way to spend any leftover money we might have wanted to use for groceries or the mortgage, which we can totally put on credit cards if we need to, DUH. And because our vacuum cleaner exploded in a burning flash of light and screeches as we prepared for the new bedroom furniture, we were able to combine the two necessary trips through Satan's Butthole, I mean Best Buy, into one. Within 24 hours, John had come home with a trunk full of electronics and I'd come home with a few blue pieces of paper detailing delivery times and serving as a constant reminder that, wow, furniture is expensive.

I guess it's good that our house has been the gluttony capital of the world for the past few days, because I've at least been able to temporarily drown my financial sorrows in mounds of chocolate, wine, cheese, bread, and scones. The few trips to the gym I've managed have felt a little phony, I'll admit, but I'll still be clinging to those trips in June when I'm bemoaning my lack of progress. I'll say something like, "this year was so much better than past years - at least I WENT to the gym, at least I TRIED to keep exercising...imagine if I HADN'T!" and then I'll loudly sip the last of my half-cup serving of Bailey's, pop another truffle into my mouth, and tell Bryce to walk the four steps across the living room to pick up the remote control for me, because July will seem like a GREAT time to start over, kind of like January does right now.

The Longest Santa Claus Line Ever

As you would expect of us, the Christmas season is one of the more chaotic times of year around here. In addition to the holidays, about 50% of our extended family has a birthday between Thanksgiving and New Year's. Not one year has gone by since we've been married that we haven't experienced at least one car trip where I'm wrapping a just-bought gift, John is speeding because we're running late, and we're both on edge, Happy Holidays, damn it! This year we tried so hard to avoid that scenario. As soon as John had some free weekends, we were the picture of efficiency - grocery shopping, cleaning, making gift lists, scheduling shopping times - we even, for the first time ever, prepared tins of goodies for our neighbors. They weren't really sure who we were when we dropped them off, since they probably all identify us as the Dysfunctional Family Who Should Remain Behind Locked Doors, but that's just a small detail. We delivered goodies; so what if it took us eight years to be decent human beings?

The other night, though, as we were scrambling to wrap all the presents we so efficiently bought in time for Christmas, I realized that we had forgotten a pretty major, time-bound activity: taking the kids to see Santa at the mall. I was willing to let it go, but the next day I had to buy one more thing for John, so Bryce and I went to the mall together, and there was Santa's lovely green velvet chair, and there was the garland-bedecked photo background, and there was the mile-long line of blank-faced parents and strollers and wound up toddlers, and there was Santa himself, looking almost as blank-faced as the 12,000 parents forming two semi-circles of a line around him, an only partially in-control mob, holding his biggest fans at bay. Bryce's mind visibly raced, then he looked at me, alarmed: "Today is the day before Christmas Eve! If I don't tell Santa what I want today, it will be too late, and he won't know what to bring!! Mom!" I couldn't think of a way to get out of this, but I made a feeble attempt: "You wrote him a letter. Besides, Santa knows what you want. Don't worry. And anyway, look how LONG that line is! We'd have to wait FOREVER. And Quinn and Dad aren't here."

Yeah, that didn't work. We drove home, picked up John and Quinn, and went back to the mall. Where. Santa. Was. On. Break. We thought we could wait it out. About half an hour went by before Santa came back, and then the line started moving about four inches every ten minutes. Dinner time was approaching, it was hot, the kids hadn't eaten since lunch, and we had nothing with us to keep them entertained in an enclosed, small space around dozens of people with quiet, still kids - if there has ever been a more perfect recipe for disaster, I haven't seen it. Quinn was, at all times, either writhing on the floor or calling Santa's name from 30 feet away. I kept telling him that he had to wait his turn to talk to Santa, but he would only turn and scowl at me and say, "I NEED TO TELL SANTA SOMETHING!" The only way we could get the kids out of there was by promising that we'd come back on Christmas Eve and be the first people in line.

The Head Elf told John that Santa would start his Christmas Eve shift at noon, but when we showed up today at 11:45 (Early! Look at us!), the line was suspiciously long, and Santa was already in his chair, smiling / staring blankly at the eerily happy elf in the green vest snapping pictures without warning. By the time we made it to the front of the line, John had walked Bryce to the food court, ordered food for the kids (who we apparently prefer to drag into long lines while they're starving, because we really enjoy being stuck in one spot with kids whose blood sugar is low and who already have a penchant for screaming in public), presented a veritable picnic on the waiting line bench for them, cleaned up their fast food aftermath, and taken about six dozen pictures of the whole thing. The sign at the entrance said Santa started at 9:00 a.m. That piece-of-crap Head Elf must be a liar. Right as the kid in front of us was hopping into Santa's lap, the guy in line behind us said, "Just watch. As soon as we get up there, Santa will go on his lunch break." I looked at John with death in my eyes and said, "For the love of God, if we get up there and Santa walks away..." John totally called my bluff and said with a little sarcasm and a lot of challenging disdain, "What? What will you do?" He and that liar Head Elf are both in the Piece-of-Crap Club, apparently.

Luckily Santa didn't start his break, and when the kid in front of us was done, Bryce and Quinn, up until now quivering with excitement and barely containing themselves long enough to keep from knocking over the mall decorations or hanging from my purse strap, approached Santa as if he were some kind of exotic animal who, while enticing and tantalizing, might also tear them limb from limb if they made the wrong move. I helped them into Santa's lap while he gazed into the distance and dreamed of one day awaking from his coma. When I backed up for the picture to be taken, Santa seemed to regain enough consciousness to ask the kids what they wanted for Christmas. I tried not to make my interest level too obvious, but Bryce has changed what he claims to want for Christmas every day for the past three weeks, and Quinn just follows suit. I didn't hear Bryce's answer, but I saw Quinn mouth, "a toy house" and Bryce told me after he was done that he asked Santa for "a hiding place."

Two days in line for the kids to ask Santa for completely random nonsense. Yep, that seems about right for us.

Mouths of Babes

The other night we took the kids out to look at the neighborhood Christmas lights. Every time we came within three blocks of an outdoor yard display nativity scene, Quinn's head would snap around instantly, neck craning, chest pressed with all his might against the seatbelt straps, saying with frantic energy, "I WANNA SEE THE BABY JESUS, I CAN'T SEE THE BABY JESUS!" At first we didn't think anything about it; he attends pre-school at a church where they've been busy explaining the Christian Christmas Story and he's familiar with the traditional manger scene. But it became a little ridiculous when he could pick out a nativity scene on a street littered with holiday displays that included giant blow-up snowglobes, Santas, snowmen, and light post-sized candy canes. Quinn has always had a knack for finding small details among clutter; his favorite books are the I Spy books (I haven't introduced him to Where's Waldo? yet - I need to mentally prepare for the nightly ritual of "reading" those). During our Christmas Light Tour, whenever he yelled to see the baby Jesus, we had to stop the car and let him gaze out the window, studying every detail of the nativity scene, but primarily baby Jesus; apparently, it's his newest obsession.

I don't identify myself as a Christian, but most of my extended family does, and we live in a region where the majority of the population does, too. I want the kids to have as well-rounded a world view as possible, which doesn't mean that I want to exclude any and all aspects of Christianity from their lives, but it does mean that I also want them to be exposed to other belief systems and traditions. As the years have gone by, John and I haven't exactly written a detailed plan for how we'll accomplish this, and I certainly wasn't planning on doing it in a discussion with a five-year-old, but after all the baby Jesus talk during the Christmas Light Tour, Bryce cornered me last night at bedtime. He lay there on his pillow looking from me to the ceiling to the top of his eyelids, and as always he used his hands to emphasize his deep curiosity and sense of confusion: "How could he be born a baby and then grow up to be a spirit?"

This is exactly how he started the conversation, so I was understandably confused, myself: "Who? What are you talking about?"

He sighed. He gets so tired of always having to explain everything to me. "The baby Jesus! I am asking how he could have been born a little baby and then grown up into a spirit! I just don't understand how that could happen. How did he do that? (Oh, sorry I hit you with my hand when I said that.)"

"Oh. Hmm. Well, let me see. He didn't grow up into a 'spirit,' per se. He was a human, which is why he was born a baby. Christians believe he was the son of God."

"Yeah, God is the same thing as Jesus."

"That's what Christians believe."

"What is a Christian, anyway? Oh, I know! Christians are people in churches who read the bible." and he held his hands up together in front of his face, palms facing him, creating an open book.

"Yes, some of them go to churches. There are also other people who aren't Christians who go to different types of churches and read different books, and believe different things."

"Like who?"

"A couple of them off the top of my head are Muslims and Buddhists. But there are a LOT more in the world than that."

"What do they believe?"

"Uh. That's complicated. And I don't know all the details, but Muslims call God 'Allah' and they don't believe Jesus was the son of God. They believe in a prophet named Mohammed, who taught people how to love God."

"What about the other people you said?"

"Buddhists?"

"Yeah, Buddhists. What do they believe? And I STILL don't know how Jesus grew up into a spirit!"

"I told you he didn't 'grow up into a spirit.' He taught people about God and about how to love each other, and Christians believe he's the son of God, which is probably why you're thinking of him that way."

"But that's not really true."

"Well, that depends on what you believe--"

"Well we don't know if it's true! We don't know what God looks like, or how big he is."

"And we don't know if God is a 'he.'"

"Or a 'she.' Or if God has lips or a crown....well of course he doesn't have lips or a crown!"

Lips or a crown? This is what happens when you have a religious discussion with a five-year-old. I nodded and prepared to leave his room, but on my way out the door, he stopped me again: "How come spirits never die? I mean, I know PEOPLE die, but how do spirits live forever? I don't understand."

"Dude, I have no. Idea. How to answer you."

"Well I know. Spirits are bigger than the sun, which is very big, very bright, and very hot. So that is how they live forever. Right?"

"Can't we just discuss how Santa fits down the chimney like other five-year-olds do with their normal, sane moms? Please?"

Strife, Interrupted

Lately every time I try to leave a comment on a blogspot blog, Blogger forces me to sign in again, and then brings me to my dashboard and FORCES me at gunpoint to post something here. So here I am. I was trying to leave a comment for GCQ, but now she may never know. (GCQ, love your tree. That's what I was going to say. Unfortunately Blogger is holding me hostage. Sorry.)

It's funny that this is happening, because lately it seems like everything I set out to do gets hijacked out of nowhere and against my will by some completely random activity. The other night I innocently went to hang up a new suit I bought for work, but that five-second act turned into a four-hour project. Why, instead of wrapping all of the presents piling up in our pathetic excuse for a "walk-in" closet, I thought a better way to free up some space in there would be to examine / try on / categorize / re-organize every piece of clothing I own. Strangely, there is still no space to "walk" in the closet (it might be all those unwrapped presents on the floor), but there is a lot more space for the dozens of empty hangers on the rack now. And that's great, because the crowded clothing rack was really taking a lot away from my kids' holiday season, but those still unwrapped gifts, the ones they keep eagerly looking for under the tree? Obviously a lower a priority than the closet organization.

I was telling John a story the other day about how a friend I hadn't seen in a few months had told me I looked great during a conversation about diet and exercise, and that I'd responded with some or other complaint about body fat storage and what I need to work on, and John said, "You don't know how to accept a compliment." He's right, but I think it's less about not accepting compliments and more about how I tend to focus on Fixing What's Wrong. I've said before that it's not that I don't see and appreciate the positive, and that's true. But I might not always communicate that I see it, because what I do communicate is whatever I'm trying to work out in my mind at that time - whether it's how I need to increase my protein and stop drinking margaritas if I ever expect to see the changes I want to see in my body, or how I need to do a better job of addressing the kids' behaviors and not letting them pull a big reaction out of me, or how our entire household needs more structure and less chaos and it must be on my shoulders to identify exactly what that will look like.

I got an e-mail yesterday from a very nice reader that made me realize - or remember, since I'm sure I already knew this - that none of you can read my mind. You don't know about the recurring good, sweet, hilarious things that go on around here unless I actually mention them, which, many times, I don't. This is completely consistent with who I am. I focus intently on whatever difficulties I'm trying to overcome. It's why I don't want to give Hannah a pat on the back just for getting out of bed in the morning. It's why I don't tend to say "good job" to someone unless what they've done seems above and beyond what I would consider to be every day general life expectations (whether my expectations match others' or not). It's why what I talk about tends to be either serious and difficult or sarcastic and self-deprecating. The positive is there, but it's on the back burner for me, it's something I don't have to focus on so intently, it's something I don't have to overcome - and therefore I tend not to communicate about it. What results is a perception that all of my experiences are negative or difficult or extreme, that my kids are disrespectful of me 100% of the time, that I teeter on the edge of a breakdown every waking moment.

So, amidst my stream of intended horror stories, my attempts to mentally work through and thus solve every single large or small problem in my life and the life of my family, I'm interrupting myself to say something. It seems like a very basic experience to me (maybe even one most would consider "expected"), but it represents all of the good on the back burner: Every night after I pull into the driveway after work and struggle through the door with my handfuls of gym bag and purse and keys, those kids - the ones to whom I give hyperbolic nicknames like "demon" and "dark lord" when I'm in my "work it out mentally" phases - stop what they're doing, whatever it is, and run to me, smiling, calling my name, telling me they missed me and they need - NEED - a hug and a kiss. Last night after his bath, Quinn was watching a Christmas special on TV and I walked in prepared to argue with him about bedtime, but I said only, "Quinn, it's time to read a story and go to bed, buddy." He stood up in his chair to be eye-level with me, put his arms out for me to hold him, and said, "with YOU, mommy?" as if to say he was fine with bedtime, he was fine with anything, really, as long as I would hold him. As I carried him upstairs his head rested against my shoulder and his legs dangled around my waist; he sighed and closed his eyes and made the soft smack-smack-smack sleepy sound with his mouth, perfectly at peace, content, quiet, still. Trust me when I tell you that the miracle of that is not lost on me.

Between Hypocrisy and Survival

Did you like how I said, in a mild Soup Nazi fashion, "no banners for you!" right before I slapped up a new one on our site? That seems cold. Sorry about that. Without belaboring the issue or providing you with the boring details of our Friday nights, I'll just say that it takes about 25 minutes with a glass of wine and the inability to focus on reading or doing any other business function to create a banner and change the colors on our own site. I wouldn't feel right about charging someone for me to slap something together in under half an hour while drinking, though, and that's about all I'm capable of when it comes to banners (or really anything blog-related) right now. So, there's my excuse. You can leave your written complaint in the box over there - it's that really huge cardboard one stuffed to overflowing, sitting on the floor littered with the ones that couldn't squeeze into the slot - those are mostly Bryce's, because Quinn prefers to scream his directly into my ear.

Oh, hey! Speaking of screaming, or, to use Bryce's rendition of that phrase, "speakin' about screaming" or alternatively, "talkin' about screaming," there is a story I should tell, but it isn't funny - at least not the screaming part - and I have been working on how to make it funny, not because I wanted to write it in a funny way, even though I do, but because if I can make it funny in my mind, looking back, then I can somehow let it go and not see myself as the genetic reason for my kids' tendencies to jab me with scepters of evil every chance they get. The details are boring and identical to almost every other story I've told about going out in public with my ever-plotting sons: Blah blah, we were at the grocery store. Blah blah, Quinn ran away with the cart and Bryce exploded with laughter. Blah blah, my blood started boiling. Blah blah, the other grocery store patrons grinned and made comments about how "cute and giggly" the kids were and looked at me like I was an evil hag when I said, "Yeah, I can't take them out in public together." Blah blah, this particular patron defended the kids and said they were being "good" and repeated the word "giggly" which wasn't exactly an accurate statement, as the word "giggle" implies a soft, quiet laughter, and what the kids were doing in the store, IN MY EAR, was not soft or quiet or anything resembling a giggle at all, and so I replied to said patron as politely as possible, while attempting not to injure her with the laser beams of hatred from my eyes, "Yes, well. It progresses from here," thus sealing my own stupid fate. Blah blah, by the time we got to the cash register, even though I had strapped Quinn into the cart, my attention was diverted to the grocery purchase and accompanying logistics of purse-digging, bank card-grabbing, payment, loading, and re-loading when the cashier destroyed the wooden cart that the clementines were packed in, and this presented the perfect opportunity for Bryce to turn into a complete raging psychotic, echoing Quinn's bellowing chorus of POOPY POOPY POOPY HAHAHAHA, waving his hands in the air, writhing around on the floor of the cash register lane, keeping the people behind us from being able to move up, going limp when I tried to move him - good times. Blah blah, I almost exploded. Blah blah, we walked to the car and the kids kept laughing and screaming, ecstatic in their disrespect. Blah blah, I morphed into Satan and burned the kids alive with my shrieks. When they laughed at that, I morphed into Satan's Pure, Unfiltered Rage and at that point I blacked out and awoke moments later with a throat raw from screaming, the car parked in the driveway, Bryce silently, calmly hopping out and running inside for his blanket, and Quinn still sitting in his seat, watching me and wondering at what point I would use my inside voice to communicate my "disgust" with their "horrible, unacceptable behavior in the store."

Hmm, I was right. That just simply isn't funny. Morphing into Satan's Rage is bad, right? Doing exactly what I tell my kids NOT to do while criticizing that same behavior is definitely going to fall under the category of "horrible" and "unacceptable." The thing is, what I want to say is that the 20-minute horror of completely losing control has now overshadowed every other positive experience I had with or provided for my kids this weekend. I can't decide if that's because I'm letting my own self-centered guilt blow it out of proportion (I don't think so) or if it's because that 20 minutes was just the culmination of two non-stop days of deep breaths and time outs and starting over and counting to ten, and it seems a little ridiculous, or sad, or mind-numbingly discouraging to me that two solid days with my own children should be such an effort, such an exhaustive exercise in anger management. The phone rang within minutes of walking in the door from the grocery store / car ride experience, and it was my mother-in-law, who is not exactly on my list of people I would normally (read: EVER) confide to. But she asked how things were going and Bryce was on the couch with his blanket for time out, and Quinn was upstairs in his room for time out, and I was surrounded by groceries and an open refrigerator and general physical and emotional chaos, so I bawled into the phone, I don't understand why it's this way. I try to prepare myself, to prepare them. I read. I think. I work really hard at this, but it's like I've never done anything at all. People say it's just "kid stuff" but it's not. It's NOT. This is beyond that. And now it's time for their lunch, and so I better start ramping up for the fight that will be nap time. "No," she said. "You don't need to 'ramp up' for anything. You just deal with the hour you're in right now. It's just survival." And I thought of my last session with the trainer at the gym, where he asked me to hold my body up, facing down, by my toes and forearms, and alternately lift one leg with the opposite arm, so I'd be balancing first on my right leg (my right set of toes, actually, holy crap that's hard) and left arm, then on my left leg and right arm. I have done this move before, but never with my toes elevated on a ball, which they were this time. I was struggling the same way I struggled with the jump rope at my first session; I was bewildered, frustrated, even a little angry. "It's a very small point of balance," he said. "You have to practice; sometimes it takes a while to find it." We switched to a move where I only had to lift one arm at a time, and I accomplished it, but it was sloppy and more challenging than I could have imagined; I thought I was strong enough for that move, but apparently, not yet. "You don't seem like yourself today," he said. Normally when I finish one exercise, I hop up and we move to the next one, but this time when I dropped my arm for the last time, my entire body slumped to the floor, my face flat against the mat, my head shaking back and forth in disbelief and disappointment. I forced myself up and he asked if I was okay. "Yeah, it's just really disappointing; I don't understand why I couldn't do that." "Well," he said, "you can't be 100% every day."

Sometimes there are no answers, I think. Just survival and some sloppy, shaky, awkward attempt at balance. At least that's what I'm telling my kids so they don't disown me or have me locked up.

Cobwebs

Things are getting dusty in here, aren't they? The stagnation of late reflects the disarray in my own tired brain, and also acts as an html-coded representation of numerous little things like the stale snacks from our Thanksgiving trip sitting in a junk heap on top of our refrigerator after a month of not discarding them. What doesn't make sense, what the staleness and stagnation don't reflect is the amount of head-spinning activity our household has experienced lately. How can things be dusty and stagnating when I haven't stopped moving for the past two weeks? Error. Does not compute.

As a few of you have learned the hard way (sorry Mary and Suebob), we've reached a point where the chaos and commitments have swallowed us whole. We're the types of people who'd prefer to survive our kids' childhoods without actually being committed in the worst sense of the word, and so we're working on digging out of some holes. Fringelements was a hole we willingly dug and jumped into, and it was the most fun hole to create, but it's also the first one we're stepping out of - at least for now. We love the work and we plan on continuing some time next year (with some changes), but right now we have to focus on not going certifiably insane over the time commitments we keep biting off like too-huge chunks of dry brownie - tasty choking hazards.

As I've mentioned before, the people who pay me have become quite demanding of my time; posting and reading and general maintenance of this site have become very challenging. I'm pretty adamant about sleeping at night, and so I'll never really "catch up" with where I should be. The blogging community is very fast-paced and here and now, the participation in which sometimes starts to feel like a job in and of itself. I might be a spotty lurker for a while, commenting if I have the ability; I might be a spotty poster for a while, too, posting when I can, hopefully never less frequently than once a week. It's just that these brownie chunks have really sharp, dry, broken edges and I have to focus pretty intently on not choking right now. I'll have to worry about clearing away all these cobwebs a little later.

Maturity, meet Paranoia

The other day after we had put up all of the decorations the Christmas tree and as I was running down my mental list of obligations I could find ways to avoid over the next few weeks, Bryce looked at me earnestly and said, "When are we going to put up that pretty garland?" I dismissed him and told him everything was put away, we were done decorating. "WHY?!", he demanded. "Well frankly, Bryce, I don't want to have to worry about you and Quinn using it as a superhero cape or a torture device." He was insulted, angered: "I won't do that! And I'll keep Quinn away from it." I felt a little guilty when he said this, but I wasn't faltering: "We'll put the garland up next year when you're both a little older and less inclined to destroy loose objects in the living room. It's not your job to keep Quinn away from the garland anyway." He stomped his foot, his eyes flashed, and his fist sliced an arc through the air from his shoulder to his thigh for emphasis: "I'm really TRYING, mom! I'm just TRYING to find a job around here. Nobody ever lets me help!"

(News flash, Kristen: You have a kid, not a baby. Remember? You just wrote about it.)

The garland is now up. Also, Bryce's new "job" is to wash the windows and straighten the living room. Everybody wins!

In recognition of Bryce's impressive maturity, I took him with me to do some shopping, one of the things I couldn't cross off of my list of holiday obligations. After a couple of hours spent fishing through picked-over, broken, incomplete, or just plain crappy merchandise, and then standing in line behind people who had purposely chosen broken or incomplete merchandise so as to haggle with the Garden Ridge cashier (classy, by the way), Bryce was tired and hungry. I took the route any conscientious desperate mother would and promptly brought him home for a healthy dinner and relaxing bath before bed fed him french fries and candy and sped to the next store on my list. By then, his fatigue was starting to become a problem for me. Not because he turned into a whiny lump of tantrum, which is what I expected, but because of this:

Me: Do you think she'd like this gigantic statue of a giraffe?

Bryce (eyes darting, whispering loudly): Yeah, that's cool. But mom. MOM! I think the store is going to close.

Me: No it won't. We have time. Oooh, I wonder if they'd like that insanely oversized bird bath. What do you think?

Bryce (concerned, agitated): I don't know. MOM. What if they don't know we're in here and they close the store?

Me: Calm down. They will tell us before they close.

Bryce: But they can't tell us if they don't know we're here! I think we need to go, mom! They're going to CLOSE!

Me: Bryce. What is your deal? They know we're here, and they will tell us when it's time for the store to close, and then we'll leave. Now, how about this random rock carving of a sleeping pig? Hmm??

Bryce (eyes popping out of skull, still speaking in a loud, frantic whisper): We are going to be locked in this store! They don't know we're here and they're going to close and they're going to lock those doors and then we'll be stuck here. DO! YOU! HEAR! ME?!

At the next place, every time I turned a corner to look at something, Bryce thought we were leaving, that I was finally heeding his warnings, and he'd say, with a new spring in his step, "Okay! Good! We're going STRAIGHT to the cashier. We're not stopping along the way." and then I would stop and pick up something else and his elation would turn to terror again, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING, WE CAN'T STOP! CASHIER! NOW! WE HAVE TO GET THERE! THEY ARE GOING TO CLOSE!" His head was spinning from the shock and disbelief he felt over the fact that his own mother was so oblivious to this great threat, Store Closing.

I'm working on a way to turn this irrational fear to my advantage. Psychological abuse is something I can so rarely use against the dark lords. So, you know...I need to savor this.

Wake

A co-worker showed up with his wife and eight-week-old baby at the office today. The cube-dwelling crowd immediately gathered around to ooh and aah, and it took me several minutes to realize that I was the only one there with kids whose kids weren't babies. Everyone else was in the category of Pre-Kid Pregnant, Pre-Kid Single and Uninterested, or Post-Kid For Less Than Six Months. My co-worker's wife was doing a lot of smiling and nervous juggling of the squirmy, squeaky, sleeping mass of baby from one arm / stomach section / hip / shoulder to the other, making a lot of the statements you make as a brand new parent, statements that really have no substance but comfortably fill the time when everyone is standing around awkwardly staring while you uncomfortably bounce your kid from one side of your body to the other and wish the spotlight would stop making you sweat already, the post-natal hormones provide enough heat, really, we don't need that spotlight, GET IT OFF! STOP STARING AT ME! "He's such a serious baby. Oof. There you go, are you going to open your eyes now? Yyeeesss. Oh, don't get upset now. No. We're here to see everyone at daddy's office. Yeah. Mmm-hmm. See?"

I started to tell a story about Bryce's babyhood, "My first kid was really serious as a baby too! Even when he was older and started smiling, he would only smile at select people; you had to be in his CIRCLE. His chosen circle. He was very particular. Hahaha." It felt strange, though. They all looked at me, expecting more. Surely I would have some sweeping comment to make - about personalities, childhood, humanity. After all, I no longer had babies. I was the mom of kids now. I had nothing to add to the baby conversation; I should leave that to the ones most qualified, the ones who knew the most recently updated AAP recommendations regarding infant sleeping and eating, the ones with the still pristine strollers and the vehicles sans goldfish cemeteries littering every visible floor board.

When I made my comment about Bryce while I watched that soft, squirmy infant rooting around while he wondered with irritation where the warm sling was and why it had been so rudely and abruptly removed, I got a flash of my kids -- but not as babies -- as they are now. Surprisingly, that flash didn't feel achy or regretful; I didn't find myself longing for the baby days and wringing my hands about how unfair it all is and how tragically fast it went by. It did, of course, go by at the tragic speed of lightning - but it didn't feel painful or sad to acknowledge that in full. Rather, I told my story and realized these people really didn't want to hear about my kids' histories - they were here to experience the newness and squirminess of the gorgeous newborn present, not the blurrily similar past of someone unknown, someone now in a classroom, learning to read and write and play the piano and paint a picture. I walked away from the group picturing my kids with their long, lanky legs, their full heads of kid hair, their scuffed tennis shoes; hearing their articulate voices expressing sentiments and original thoughts like Quinn's mischievous and yet still creative twist on a school letter game, "puh-puh-puh-puh Poopy. The letter is P!" or Bryce's latest exclamation whenever anything is unexpected or slightly frustrating (his own self-created masterpiece, one that rings in my ears all day long now), "Great craps!"; feeling their purposeful, chosen embraces, their warm, soft, small arms grabbing me as I get up to leave them in their beds at night - their act of simultaneous objection ("you can't go!") and desire ("I want you with me!"), acts they think through, acts they've learned, acts we've danced around now between three and a half and five years. We've put our time in. We've gained a lot of ground. We're not squirming or nervously juggling or avoiding spotlights anymore; we've entered a new realm, together.

My babies are gone. But my kids -- yes, the same ones who drive me insane and make me question my value as a parent and human being with their shenanigans -- are here with bold, independent ferocity, mirthful sincerity, and a brilliance that brings me to my knees. Enjoy this time, new parents; it is miraculous. But when it goes, wave goodbye and smile at what greets you, at what is left in the wake of what you think you want to hold forever.

Ushering in the season of peace, the way only we can.

The twenty-minute period that the kids most enjoyed this weekend was when I put them in the back yard and stood on the warm, dry side of the sliding glass door, looking at them, feigning irritation. They were aiming snowballs at me (with a little too much joy in their pitches, if you want to know the truth), and hitting the glass with slushy, yet still shocking splats. I was just thankful for the relative quiet. The two hours prior to my revelation to bundle them up and throw them head-first into the untouched whiteness blanketing our yard had involved games like Throw Hard Objects Down The Stairs Before She Can Get To Us and Hide Under Tables With Forbidden Food Items And Then Scream To Be Found And Then Run Very Very Fast.

Quinn doesn't understand the concept of making a snowball; he thinks snowballs are separate creations from the vast expanse of snow on the ground, so he spent the first few minutes confused and frustrated: Where is a snowball? WHERE? Amazingly, he did find a few ready-made snowballs, even though they were more like snow boulders, but once he'd exhausted those resources, he was forced against the will of every fiber of his little rebellious being to follow my instructions (bellowed from the safe, warm confines on the nice side of the glass door), and he finally started scooping up handfuls of snow and creating his own Quinn-sized weapons, whose splats against the glass were much less threatening.

Bryce, as he does with everything, turned it into a "contest" the rules of which resembled Calvinball, from what I can tell, with points randomly being assigned to each beautiful slush-glass contact. Bryce's first goal was 300 points, which he achieved in three splats before realizing in actuality, he needed 26,000 points, I better go make more snowballs! Quinn, of course, never received any points regardless of how many hits he made; it didn't seem to bother him, though, since he was more concerned with the fact that he was "running out" of available snowballs than he was with winning Bryce's game. (Note to Quinn: Good philosophy. Never forget that, and take my word for it -- YOU CAN NOT WIN BRYCE'S GAME. EVER.)

Also this weekend, in an attempt to keep up the facade with our family that we are perfectly functional, contributing members of society who should absolutely not be considered "unstable" or "unfit" or "insane" just because that is all, in fact, true, we told the kids we were going to take holiday pictures to mail out to the family. Wait, let me re-phrase that. We begged, bribed, and groveled with them for two days before finally resorting to our 50% failproof method of screaming and threatening so that we could get one decent shot of them 1.) stationary and 2.) not saying "poopy." Our really great techniques got us nowhere fast, literally: the kids ended up doing their usual maniac laps around the house, only this time in nice we-are-a-normal-family clothes and with combed my-parents-are-not-on-the-verge-of-nervous-breakdowns hair, while John and I resigned ourselves to a lifetime of drinking. Our holiday cards are going to be nothing if not realistic.