In case you missed what he said, he wants a motorcycle that goes 100 miles per hour.
And not a toy one either.
To translate she wants:
a black ipod Nano (yes)
Nintendo DSi (no, she has a plain old DS that it just fine)
head phones (they come with the iPod)
toy set (even she doesn’t know what this means anymore)
a shirt with a vest attached only in the front (I can not in good conscience make my daughter a fashion don’t)
anything else I can get
lots of other stuff
hundreds of things, Please!
My 16 yr old son found this first draft of my daughter’s Christmas list in one of his school notebooks. We haven’t stopped laughing about it. In fact now it has become an inside joke
Mom, know what I want for Christmas?
No, son, I do not.
Hundreds of things… Please!
Well, since you asked politely…
We crack ourselves up.
I don’t think I ever linked to this post over at AlphaMom, but I wrote about simplifying the holidays and taking the whole season back from the “gimmees” and “I wants..”
As Christmas quickly closes in, and I find myself scrambling to get everything done in my typical procrastinator fashion, I am mentally grading myself on how well I did. I am not really sure that I am passing.
When I was going through all of my photos to make my 10 yr old son the birthday slideshow I was struck again and again by the smalll, ordinary moments that I captured that would never make the cut to be blown up and hung on a wall. Or even put in a scrapbook. You know, if I had such a scrapbook.
Mostly I noticed how my children interact with each other.
Over and over I saw photos of them looking at each other with love. Or admiration.
I saw them being kind. Helpful. Encouraging.
Sometimes (many times?) these moments get lost among the bickering. The senseless arguing. The eyerolling. The tantrums. The crying. All of those things take on more weight than they deserve. Overshadowing the fact that underneath it all, they love each other. Even if they aren’t locking arms and singing kumbaya.
Mere seconds after the photos above were taken.
10 yr old: Give me the knife before you cut yourself.
6 yr old: NOOOO. WAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!
40-mumble-mumble yr old: Do not grab the knife away from him!
10 yr old: I want to eat those cucumber slices. I don’t want him to chop off his finger and bleed all over them.
6 yr old: I’m not going to cut myself!
10 yr old: Baby.
6yr old: I’m not a baby. Do babies have knife-es?
10 yr old: In this house they do!
40-mumble-mumble yr old: Oh for the love of God, stop bickering. Don’t make me throw all of the knives away.
(Yes, these ridiculous things do come out of my mouth)
My boys with their friends. Drinking hot cocoa in front of the fireplace. Relaxing.
Because that’s what you do during the holidays, even if it is close to 70 degrees outside.
(I just downloaded the Instagram App and I am abusing the shit out of it. Kind of like I did to the Hipstamatic App a few months back.)
I decided to take all the books out of the bookcases in the “library” and reorganize them by color. I think calling this room a library makes it seem more special than calling it the front room of the house that is empty except for bookcases and a few stray toys, a couple of mismatched discarded socks, and musical instruments.
I have discovered a few things:
1) I need to buy books based on color
2) From here on out I need to refrain from buying books with white spines
3) This process takes a long time, way longer than I thought, therefore…
4) The week before Christmas is not the best time to undertake this project
5) IKEA bookcases are not actually designed to hold heavy books
My oldest son had his tonsils removed Friday.
Merry Christmas, son, have some pureed food!
He is doing remarkably well and wanted to know why he couldn’t go to the gym and lift weights or eat sloppy joes for dinner. Uh, because your throat looks like it was scooped out with a melon baller? Is that a good enough reason?
The painted handprint/foorprint shirt that Miles made with his kindergarten class.
I asked him to stand still so I could take a photo of the shirt and he ran over and posed in front of the fireplace. Couldn’t stop laughing at his poses.
Look, I’m in a magazine!
And by magazine he means one of those flyers that come in the mail for places like JC Penney or Sears. And his post looks just like what you find in there, which made it all the more funny.
Miles is writing a card to his teacher. This is a thank you card for the amazing presents she gave him for both his birthday and Christmas. (as I told HeatherB, you know you live in TX when a teacher gives your child a gun toy as a present. Nerf gun, but still. In CT it would have been a politically correct baby doll so he could get in touch with his loving side, by tearing the doll’s head off and riding over it with his bike)
Miles loves his teacher.
Today I bought all the teacher gifts. I love that they all have wishlists and tell a little about themselves on their websites. Because I suspect they get way, way too many bubble baths and candles.
They all said the loved to read so it was giftcards to Barnes & Noble all around.
The boys reading one of the Christmas books, The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey.
I call the photo, The Christmas Miracle of Them Sitting So Close Together and Not Fighting.
I consider it my parental right, no DUTY, to lie to my children. I wrote all about this over at AlphaMom today. You should go read it and tell me what sorts of little white lies you tell your kids. Unless you never lie.
Lack of segue.
Yesterday I had my yearly well woman check up, though at this age it feels less like a well check up and more like we are looking for things gone wrong. Like I am a ticking time bomb hurtling toward my grave.
We went through my extensive list of issues: Hashimoto’s hypothyroid, Celiac, blah-bitty, blah blah, my burning desire to join a double dutch jump rope team that is being thwarted by my bladder (no, I really have no interest in doing this, but I would like the OPTION), blah, blah, blah, pre-menapause.
Turns out you can’t just have elective surgery to have a cozy hammock constructed upon which your bladder can rest out the remainder of its days. My bladder is tired. It was used as a trampoline seven times. It wants to rest. But no, there are tests and protocols for having such a procedure done. And after talking all about it, my issues, the potential complications, not to mention the tests that would need to be performed, I am not a candidate. Which is fine. Better than fine. I have already mastered the clench while sneezing.
Also, not surprisingly they won’t just rip my uterus out so I can be done with the whole bloody mess.
And let’s not forget the PMS. But DON’T YOU DARE SUGGEST I HAVE PMS. I am not acting irrationally. You are being patronizing of my very legitimate feelings. I am NOT OVER REACTING. No one understands me. Well, now I am just sad. And bloated. Woe is me. I am going to cry my eyes out. I DO realize I can buy more peanut butter, that’s not the point! What? IF YOU DON’T KNOW I’M NOT GOING TO TELL YOU! My God, the PEANUT BUTTER IS SYMBOLIC OF ALL THAT IS WRONG IN MY LIFE! Wait, come back here.
It’s like puberty all over again. Except add wrinkles, the effects of gravity, and grey hair. Fun times. Fun times.
As a friend of mine recently said, all these years she thought her mother was just a raving bitch when she was kid, now she realized her mother was beginning to go through menopause. That warmed my heart, because isn’t that how we all want our kids to remember us? As a total nutcase?
