So long, stinky old year!

I'm going to celebrate by eating a big piece of New Year's Cake - my last one for ages, since tomorrow, the Grim Diet Begins.
And here are my New Year's Resolutions:
1. The Grim Diet: twenty pounds must be lost. MUST.
2. Start eating those "fruit" and "vegetable" things I hear everyone talking about these days.
3. Exercise. Every day. Ignore natural tendancy towards sloth.
4. Stop being such a big whiny jerk around my husband.
5. Continue being tidier.
6. Start dressing better and less like a bookwormish hobo.
7. Start work on Magnum Opus. Which will be, of course, my master work about me and Magnum P.I. solving crimes while wearing short-shorts (hence the need for number 1#.).
8. Start being more grateful for things.
9. Learn a Useful Skill. I tried to master knitting this year with non-success, so perhaps I'll try to conquer making hand shadow animals or how to light matches on the first try.
10. Be more patient with all of the many, many wrong people I encounter all the time.
11. Actually keep up my Sabbath poem project.
SO here I go. A year of hard work, restraint and patience awaits me. The enthusiasm I feel can barely be measured...

Undecorating

Our Christmas tree was a beautiful thing. This morning, however, we woke up to a big dry tinderstick in the livingroom and knew that the day had come to take it down. My husband hauled it out of the house, leaving behind a long thick trail of pineneedles, that will snap sharply underfoot for months, long after we think they've all been vacuumed away. And thus does Christmas live on in our memories.

One of the things that I love about Christianity is the rhythm of the religious year, the swelling of festivals and holy days leading up to Christmas and then the gentle falling away again, until the Easter season begins. Christmas is not over, however - remember the 12 Days Of Christmas? They begin on Christmas Day and stretch languidly until the morning of Epiphany, January 6th. We have a small family party that day, with homemade paper crowns, three little gifts, and a cake. And then Christmas falls away for another year, leads us back gently to Ordinary Time.

This year - and I've said it before - was hard and discouraging, and yet its terrible lesson was that I love my ordinary life, which only rarely has something as beautiful and startling as a tree shining in the livingroom. It was a lesson that I hope I only have to learn once, and I hope for 2007 to be a year of unrelenting ordinariness, of lessons unlearned and unneeded.

And WHY do I need a little ninja?

Two words: feminine protection.

My oldest daughter, as I have written, has been in speech therapy for five of her seven years. Through lots of hard work - all hers - she now sounds more or less like other kids her age. The Boy has a bit of something going on, speech-wise, so I mentioned to a female relative that we were going to bring him in for a speech assessment.
"I thought he was perfect!" she wailed. Female relative (not anyone who reads my blog. Hi, aunts!) had two children, and they both reached adulthood with no problems - they were perfect as opposed to my disappointingly broken children - my older two with their speech impediments, the baby's health and growth problems, and their childhoods and my role as their mother was now hard.

But what does it mean when things are harder? There are things that will never be perfect for us, there are things that will always be hard and yes, this is sad. It might be my own thick-headed nature, but the only things that I've ever appreciated in my life where the things that came hard for me, the things that I had to wait for. My daughter being so bright and doing so well feels triumphant instead of merely my due; my baby walking across the living room feels miraculous, feels like a shower of gold.

Insert Ninja Noise Here

My husband had desperately wanted to buy me a Wee Ninja for Christmas, but they were sold out everywhere, so he made me one.
He's a GOOD husband. Keeps me in ninjas.

I've been thinking lately of how fortunate it is that both people in my marriage love old things. Our house, for example, is a creaky antique - too young by a couple of years to be truly Victorian but wistfully hinting back at it, all high ceilings and mismanaged 1970's renovations. When I was in high school, I would watch for a sight of this house every morning, admiring the red geraniums in the bay windows, liking the sweep of the huge old trees in the front.
And now it is my house, as though I planned it - which I did not. It feels right, though, feels correct. This is my house, has always been my house, and we are the right and proper owners of it. Also, it was cheap.
My husband has vowed to finish the office this week, the room where my computer lives. It's going to become the work and craft room, which will clear up a lot of the rest of the house. I'll post photos of the transformations as/if it happens.

My children are extremely lucky in the gift department - they each got literally dozens of presents for Christmas and our living room is currently stacked full. Today's task is to clean their playroom and bedroom, making space for this year's load of toys.

I am ambivalent about their sudden ability to open up a toystore - surely, an ideal Christmas would be more like one of the Little House On The Prairie books, where Laura and Mary got tin cups and a stick of candy and a penny. Deprivation: now THAT is Christmasy! But they are well-loved and there isn't a lot of kids on either side of our extended family (in fact, there's a grand total of none, aside from them, on their father's side) and people want to give them presents and who am I to grump? They're not spoiled - apart from having every toy on earth - and maybe this memory of golden overabundance, of days filled with endless gifts, will warm some cold future.

The things I wanted for Christmas - books, perfume, candy , a homemade ninja from my husband and A NEW TELEVISION - I got, but more than that: I was able to fill my kids' stockings and eat Santa's cookies and watch my angelic (at least for that day) child run through the aisles of our church bringing a message of great joy to everyone, to me. After this hard, rather terrifying year, I was given another Christmas.

Christmas on TeeVee

My kids watched the Caillou Christmas Movie today, a movie that my husband irritably titled "The Twelve Days of Whining Before Christmas." My munchkins aren't normally Caillou fans, but put the word "Christmas" in the title of anything and they'll beg to watch it.
Examples:
"But moooooooooom! It's "A Jim Lehrer Christmas Special"!"
"Pleeeeeease let us watch this fishing show! It's about LITTLE BABY JESUS!"
"Why can't I watch Santa fill the desperate housewives' stockings, mama? And why isn't Santa wearing pants?"

There are many sturdy, upright television boys - Arthur Read seems like a nice kid. Franklin The Turtle (is that his last name? If I was on his show, would I be Rebecca The Human?) is a sweetheart, and in fact, when my son was a little bit younger he used to ask to have Franklin over nearly daily. And I love Little Bear. But nobody loves Caillou - kids of all ages of my acquaintance seem to be united in holding him in scorn.
Poor Caillou. He's that kid who cries in the corner at nursery school all day. He's the kid who wets his pants all the time in Pre-Kindergarten. Every kid feels superior to him, and I guess that's the secret to his success. His parents seem chipper and affectionate, but I'm betting they drink heavily in the evening after Caillou goes to bed.

Anyhow. We're having scads of relatives over for supper tonight, which means I have to go smash all the lightbulbs so they can't see how filthy our grim hovel is, so I'd best get to work. Merry Christmas Eve Eve to everyone!

Twenty Months

You have been a handful this month. You're into everything, like to put forbidden objects in your mouth, yank objects away from your siblings and throw prolonged, shrieking tantrums:

Baby MAD! Baby SMASH!

Your bedtime routine is faintly hilarious for me - your father tucks you in, you say a pleasant "gooooood night!" to him and close your eyes. No fuss, no muss. If you happen to hear my voice, however, all is lost - you're instantly up and screaming for me, yelling "MAMA, I STUCK!" and "HELLLP!". You have my number, all right - I have to rock you to sleep during the day, often while you stick your fingers in my eyes and my mouth, liberties you don't take with anyone else. If you wake up during the night - mercifully, you don't very often - you call my name, knowing that I'm endlessly foolish where you're concerned, that I could never make you wait for comfort. Your father and I have had "discussions" about this, but you're my baby and what can I do?

You're still thumb-sized, this little fireball of a person. At the kids' Christmas concert the other day, a baby who is a whole half a year younger than you came running over and towered over you, chunkily. The amount we worry about you feels immeasureable, feels like it could keep grim white lightbulbs burning for years.
I always thought that parents of medically vulnerable children handled it by emotionally withdrawing. It turns out that you overly bond with vulnerable kids, that they become so dear and that everything becomes precious, illuminated.

But there's so much of you, for this little twenty pound person - you say hundreds of words, speak in little clipped sentences, demand almost all of the attention. Everyone dotes on you - your siblings sneak you treats and tote you around, your youngest uncle comes over nearly daily to play with you, and my parents' daily visits are treated to your hysterical joy at their arrival. You are our huggy baby, our child who happily doles out kisses and walks around singing almost all of the time. You are brave and tough and sweethearted and pugalistic. You are a little heartbreaking delight.

For Kristi

10 Completely Unique Things About Moi
1. A homeless guy once told me that I looked just like Nefertiti, which is really the greatest compliment ever. I don't, by the way, aside from having a pointy nose.
2. I have a heart-shaped birthmark in the same spot as Raggedy Ann.
3. My thumbs are SUPER BENDY.
4. Not only can I not drive but I also am not very good on a bike. Apparently, I'm at a pre-wheel level of humanity.
5. I tend to blow up electronic things accidentally. I could make a very long list of the things I've broken.
6. I know the lyrics to pretty much every song ever written which makes me the greatest passenger EVER.
7. My dad used to dogsled competitively. My husband and I didn't grow up in the same town, but he remembers seeing me watching from the stands as a child. FATE! It was FATE!
8. I have to go through anything I write and remove about five million extra commas. My super power is, the innapropriate use, of commas.
9. I once burned my leg accidentally while checking to see how hot the glue in the glue gun actually was. My husband heard me yelp and came over to see if I was okay, and in showing him what happened I BURNED MY OTHER LEG.
10. Not once, not twice BUT THREE TIMES, I went to the hospital and doctors took HUMAN BEINGS out of my body. It's true.

The Best Screen Kiss of All Time

"He says its the chance of a lifetime."

And look! It's even seasonal!

Okay, they're not actually kissing there, but they're ABOUT TO.

So blogger is driving me a little bit crazy today.

But here is my post.
Many people had warned me that children fall really hard for their kindergarten teacher. Pshaw! The kindergarten teacher at my children's school is WONDERFUL - so creative, so insightful - but she's not warm or cuddly. My son likes her very much, but his heart was still all mine... until SHE walked in - the student teacher, Jessica.

Jessica, according to my son:
- has beautiful shiny black hair
- has smooth brown skin and big brown eyes
- smells like apples and candy
- gives good hugs
- has a soft gentle voice and never yells.

Today is Jessica's last day in his class. He insisted, when we were making his teacher's gift that we make an identical one for Jessica and so we did. In her thank you card, I wrote lamely that the boy had "liked" having her in his class, but what I should have written was this:

Thank you for being young and kind-hearted and pretty. Thank you for bringing gentleness into The Boy's classroom. Thank you for being so patient with a little boy who loves you.

Santa and One of My Babies

This is the photo I wrote about yesterday - isn't that a gorgeous Santa? Isn't that an amazingly cute little boy? Yes and yes.
I can't believe how MUCH my little guy has grown this year! He's suddenly tall and boylike, all vestiges of babyhood - those round cheeks, those soft little hands - vanished. This Christmas season is very wistful for me - I feel like it's going to be my last Christmas with a houseful of little kids.... so that's a new sensation, nostalgia for something that's happening RIGHT now. But next year, the older two will be 8 and nearly 6 and I almost can't bear how fleeting childhood is. Oh, everyone warned me that it was, but I was so mired down in whiny, endless toddlerhood that I thought it would never end. (and really, I'm still in it, thanks to the never ending stream o' babies that we apparently have going on.)

They're good kids. I'm proud of them - they're polite, smart, creative, and for the most part kind-hearted. If you had told me years ago that I would have wonderful children, I would have replied "of course", because I was a bad person with a big distorted ego. One of the first things that I realized when I had my oldest child was that I was profoundly not cut out for this job - I was too immature, too selfish, too wicked - and then the next thing I realized was that I would have to work on being the opposite of those things.

There are many things I'd like to do in my life - I'd like to see Paris, I'd like to write a novel, I'd like to be thin again - but if this is it, if this is all my life has to offer for me, then it's enough. This life - my children, my husband, my REALLY PINE SCENTED house (thanks to Monster Tree), my faith - is good, is everything I ever wanted.

Christmas Music Is Playing In My House

Ali has tagged me to list my five favorite Christmas songs and (her twist) my five most loathed Christmas songs. Christmas music has been playing at my place since mid-October, so I have a lot to choose from, but here we go:

Five Favorite Christmas Songs
1. O Come O Come Emmanuel - Pretty much anyone - I've been listening to Sufjan Steven's versions a lot recently. I LOVE THIS SONG! I heard an awful live version last night at a concert and I almost hyperventalated.
2. Old Toy Train - Raffi. I have a little boy and playing this song on Christmas Eve when he's so excited is just festively poignant to an unbearable extent.
3. Mary's Boy Child - Boney M. It's craptastic! I frickin' LOVE IT!
4. Jesus Christ The Apple Tree
The trees of nature fruitless be
Compared with Christ the applle tree

5. In the Bleak Midwinter.

And for my five least favorites:

1. Grandma Got Run Over My A Reindeer

2. Little Skidoo. Nightmare inducing.

3. So This Is Christmas - John Lennon and Yoko Ono. YUCK.

4. If We Make It Through December. Oh, THAT'S festive.

5. A Wonderful Christmas Time - Paul McCartney. Look, two Beatles made my list! Did Ringo or George ever record any Christmas music? I wonder if I'd hate that, too.

I'm tagging Randi, Lori, and Shalee.

And for Lori, here is a picture of The Baby sitting on Santa's lap two weeks ago:

Doesn't she look happy. Oh, joy. I have an incredibly sweet photo of The Boy sitting on a lovely Santa's lap taken right before we were going to bring the boy in to see if he needed some scary surgery. The lovely Santa - real white beard, velvet suit, kindly aura - asked us about the cute little toddler on his lap, so I told him the boy's medical woes AND SANTA'S EYES FILLED WITH TEARS. He kissed The Boy on top of his head and said "Santa loves you," and at that point I became completely unmanned and sobbed all the way to the hospital.

The Boy was fine. No surgery needed. Best. Christmas Ever.

Our living room is a big rectangle, 12 by 22 feet - it used to be two small, square rooms, but some previous owner removed a wall and voila, we now have one all-purpose living/dining room. We normally get mammoth, monsterous trees from my uncle's heavily-treed farm, but last year my dad very kindly decided to spare us the work and got one for us.

It was a nice-sized tree. It fit nicely in the bay window:

It did not impede traffic. Furniture did not need to be moved to accomadate it.
We were so disappointed....

This year's tree is a monster. My uncle pointed out some HUGE trees that were going to have to come down anyhow this spring, laughing that they might be a bit big for our place. My husband got a glint like Paul Bunyan in his eye and the next thing I know, we have this giant tree squatting in our living room:

Our couch is squashed flat against a wall. To walk through our living room, we now have to suck our stomachs in and turn our head, hoping that one of its monster branches doesn't scratch our eyes out.

It is exactly what we want. Too much.

Your Christmas is Most Like: Miracle on 34th Street

Sweet and caring, Christmas is about helping for you.While Santa may not exist, you try to share his spirit.

What'>http://www.blogthings.com/whatmovieisyourchristmasmostlikequiz/">What Movie Is Your Christmas Most Like?

And it had BETTER be the black and white Natalie Wood one and not the 90s abomination.

Come on in!

(If you're a non-beta blogger and can't comment on this post, I have another site up here where you can comment.)
We're getting our Christmas tree tomorrow, since we try to leave it up as close to January fifth as we can. But here's everything else (just in my living room. My kitchen is also pretty darn Christmas-y - gingerbread houses, paper banners, Advent calendars - but my camera's batteries just died and I'm too lazy to charge them.):

A lovely snowglobe, given to us by my Aunt Tammy seven years ago. This is the cause of more sibling fighting in my house than almost any other object, so it lives on top of the piano.


The top of a really tall cupboard-y thing in the living room. Note that all of the presents are stacked up there - not only does that protect them from cat invasion, but it also keeps my curious children from unwrapping them pre-Christmas. The little flowerpot Mary and Joseph in the front are a prototype for this week's Sunday School.


A lolling snowman. Without meaning to in the least, we now apparently have a snowman collection.

I let my kids arrange the nativity set on top of the piano, and now it's just ALL WRONG.

Okay, so these are some bookshelves in our living room and you can see my Presents (books! All books!) Go Up theory in action again, as well as a monster that I'm working on for my brother.

I've put these pictures up before, but here you go again:

The living room with it's giant stars.

And this is our dining room window. It's lit up now - if you look down at yesterday's post, you can see what it looked like all lit up in the darkness. Very pretty.

So here's what I'm going to do.

I'm going to have two - TWO! - blogs going at the same time, because I am greedy.
They'll have the same posts.
One will be my beta blog, for ease of posting and commenting....
the other will be my non-beta blog so my non-beta friends can comment.
Comment where you like! They'll be the same.

There's no mystery, really...

.... aside from the real mysteries. But The Mystery Of Why I Switched To Blogger Beta is easily solved - I wanted to and commenting on beta blogs was getting increasingly horrible. I think that they're planning on phasing non-beta blogs out altogether, and that they're going to make them harder and harder to use. This is just my own personal conspiracy theory, mind you.


My daughter is at left, leaning out the window. Believe it or not, she had her hair cut to just past shoulder length in September. We are a hairy people. I made her the St. Lucia wreath last night to make up my moody jerkiness yesterday. She liked the wreath so much that she wore it to school and brought it home in pristine condition.



The Girl asked me after dinner - while we eating some Lucia bread - why we celebrated things like this when her friends at school didn't. I was a bit stumped: what is the answer? Is it because we want to live lives rooted in tradition, in the rythym of faith? Is it because Mommy really, REALLY like crafts and baking?
I asked the girl why SHE thought we celebrated these things.
"To make us happy," she said without pause.

Hoy hoy.

Welcome! Welcome to my new, graphic-berefit blog. It's a barren wasteland!
Come, have a cup of punch. I've always wanted one of those punchbowls, the kind with dozens of glass cups hanging off the sides and a glass ladle - to my childhood brain, that spelled "Class and Good Times." One was on sale in a local discount store for like, $15 recently and I tried vainly to think of a good reason to buy it. Turns out that I rarely have groups of more than 10 women over for dainty sandwiches and cranberry juice mixed with gingerale, but if I ever do I WILL JUST KICK MYSELF.

So I've cheered up today. My 21 year old brother is spending the day - we ate tacos and watched Waiting For Guffman, one of my all-time favorite movies. We did not drink any punch, but I think we can all agree that punch would have been a tasty addition to the day's pleasantness. Yesterday was pretty bleak and awful, but hey, those days DO happen. And yes, not too long ago I had a post crowing about my own rockingness as a mother, which does seem slightly contradictory, but let me quote ol' Walt Whitman right now:

Do I contradict myself?

Very well then I contradict myself,

(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

Which is to say, of course, that some days are good and some days are bad and I guess the bad ones don't take away the shine from the good days. Right now, the baby is happily napping, I have some bread to start in the kitchen and some mystery novels to read with a cup of hot chocolate. Life feels good today, just the way I like it. Thanks for all of the love yesterday, and for reminding me that we're all in that spot once in a while.