The kids are gone, all five of them, and it’s quiet now. I’m not quite ready to say it’s too quiet, that will happen sometime tomorrow. Except, we’re going to celebrate the quiet and regroup from the holiday mayhem with a fake readathon day.
We stopped at Fresh Market this evening and spent too much on specialty junk food, (mmmm cheese straws), and we’ve got stacks of library books to read. We’re not getting dressed tomorrow and we’re going to lay in bed with books (and the darn dog) and just read — and nap — and take long, hot baths.
This seems like a really good way to end a fun, but very loud, holiday and keep the “gosh, it’s quiet… too quiet” thoughts away.
Chris and Michelle are here. The Little Kids are here. The tree has too many gifts underneath it, and Santa has not yet arrived.
We all Facetimed with my mom, which led to TW’s mom asking us HOW we’re able to do that… we said, “You press the Facetime button” which was not what she meant. She seems to want to know HOW it works. Or what magic allows it to happen. Or the science around it. Or something.
Skeeter has finally decided that Christopher is OK. Probably. She’s also decided that she might like this Christmas thing. The peoples keep saying YES! and giving her treats. There are many hands to give belly rubs. People leave their mail out where she can get it and she really loves eating Christmas cards.
We just have a few gifts left to wrap, which feels really nice — every time I think about it.
The first batch of Christmas cookies have been eaten completely — The Peanut Butter Blossoms. RJ is messing up my kitchen, making Jim Bars. The Mint Sugar Cookies that Saved My life have been baked. We’ll decorate them tomorrow, which is when the fun really happens.
A perfect holiday is in full swing. The only things missing are Jenn, Teddy and JMP… and Michelle’s “Baby’s First Christmas” ornament. I bet one of her siblings found it and hid it from her. Wanna bet?
Michelle Belle arrives tomorrow. Chrissy arrives Sunday. I’m very excited about both of these things. VERY excited.
The little kids come home on Sunday, too. I’m also looking forward to that, though it will mean things get really loud and even messier than they are now.
On top of the wood particles and shredded paper and dog toy stuffing scattered around the house by Skeeter, we’ll have kid stuff everywhere (at least until Skeeter starts shredding it) and there will be food messes. Lots and lots of food messes.
I’m going to be very busy enjoying the mania. And I really do plan on enjoying it. Just sitting on the sidelines watching and listening and even yelling at them all to “CLEAN THAT UP!” or “STOP EATING FOR GODSAKES!” or “TURN THE TV DOWN!” will be a joy.
As I sit here in anticipation of all of that fun, I’ve come to a decision. I’m going to break with tradition and…
I’m going to wrap the bulk of the Christmas presents tonight, before the kids come home, rather than doing it all on Christmas Eve.
For 30 years I’ve wrapped Christmas gifts on Christmas Eve, staying up late into the night to do it — not this year. Nope. I’m going to get the bulk of it down now and relax on Christmas Eve. That’s gonna be weird. Really weird, but the very idea of it is making me feel all warm and sparkly inside.
Do you wrap gifts as they arrive? Or wait until the last minute to do the wrapping?
I’ve never been good at staying organized for Christmas. Gifts get tossed into closets or drawers or cabinets or corners and I always think I know where everything is — but I never do.
I always have to go searching for some elusive something that arrived at an odd time so I tucked it away… somewhere.
Or I’m sure I put THAT in the PLACE where I keep ALL of the gifts but on Christmas Eve, that thing is MISSING and I’m tearing up the house in search of that thing I know we bought and gah! So stressful.
I’m usually pretty good at finding all of the things that need to be mailed to family members and this year I was pretty sure that was going to be the easiest part of Christmas. Because I decided not to send a lot of gifts that I had to wrap and ship. I ordered fun food gifts for my mom and dad and brother and sister. I sent a package to my mom that included her missing birthday gift (See, it was already going downhill in October!) and a gift I never managed to mail months ago that turned into a good Christmas gift anyway. And of course, JMP’s stuff. Easy because I was putting it all in Prince J’s room because Prince J is in college and nobody is using his room (except the stray kids who stayed for one night.)
But no. Apparently I didn’t put all of JMPs things in there.
I found the Christmas stocking in the laundry room, the day after I mailed two huge boxes that cost a zillion dollars to ship to Hawaii.
Yesterday, I found a Christmas ornament for JMP and his parents hiding in the bottom of the K-mart bag of stuff we bought on Thanksgiving.
I’m a little afraid to dig around in THAT place where I keep the gifts to see what else I’ve forgotten to ship.
I’m also really afraid of Christmas Eve. This is going to be the year that I can’t find a bunch of really important things — I can feel it.
Next year, I’m going to have a better strategy for keeping gifts organized. It’s gonna take me six months to figure out what that strategy is — it might involve spreadsheets — but I’m going to do it.
When I was a kid, I liked Barbie. I liked her a lot and I wanted the Dream House and the corvette and the airplane (I really had a thing for Barbie as stewardess, don’t ask me why.) I didn’t get the Dream House or the corvette or the airplane. My mom was soooo mean.
Except she wasn’t mean at all.
She made me tons of Barbie clothes — knitted or crocheted or on the sewing machine. And, while I didn’t have the Dream House, I did have a Barbie house/carrying case combo that I loved. It was the most awesome thing EVER, even though I still kind of coveted other girls’ Dream Houses.
Which is why when I had kids, they had the corvette. And the camper. And the plane. And some version of the Dream House.
They did not have homemade clothes because I was not that kind of mom. Obviously.
I think I had it better.
My house was portable, the Dream House is totally not portable.
I had just enough Barbie paraphernalia that it was fun to play with and easy to store inside of the special Barbie house/case combo. My girls had so much that the Barbie stuff was everywhere and it was hard to find the pieces you wanted, when you wanted them.
My mom was right. I was totally not right.
So when mom told me her granddaughter, Haley, wanted a Rapunzel Barbie for Christmas — I smiled.
When mom told me she was getting back into the Barbie clothes making “business” — I smiled. (And I laughed out loud when she kind of ranted about how many different patterns there are for Barbie clothes now. lol The internet is a glorious place that makes life very complicated for Barbie clothes-makers, and everyone else.)
When mom posted a photo of a Barbie with a handmade dress on her Facebook wall and said she had Barbie fever and needed shoes, and purses, and a stand and a case — I did more than smile and laugh. I went online and tracked down the Barbie house/case that I had (and loved) when I was a kid and sent it to her.
I forgot to check the front patio for packages yesterday so I wasn’t surprised to find a couple of package sized envelopes sitting on the patio this morning. However, I was surprised to see that one of those envelopes was for Skeeter, from Duncan.
You remember Duncan, right? She’s my mom’s dog? The one I dog-sat last year? The one who doesn’t bark? Right — that Duncan.
You might also remember that my mother left me a very, very long printed list of instructions for taking care of Duncan, Miss Priss, the fish, the plants, and the house. Most of the instructions were related to Duncan and one of the line items was something like…
“After you come home, she’ll grab her duck and carry it around the house for awhile.”
And it’s true. Duncan did that.
What’s also interesting is that Skeeter does this too. Or something very similar.
If we leave her at home, she will grab a stuffed toy of some sort and carry it around the house for awhile after we get home.
It’s cute. Even if Skeeter’s babies are a lot more dead than Duncan’s duck.
Anyway, back to the package for Skeeter.
I decided to hand her the envelope to see what she’d do with it.
Duh. How dumb was that? She started chewing it. And eating the paper.
So I took the big envelope away and found a Christmas gift bag inside (which caused me to kind of roll my eyes) so I handed the gift bag to Skeeter to see what she’d do. (Right, that’s me, still being dumb.)
She started eating the gift bag. She did not particularly care what was in the gift bag, she was happy to eat the little rope handle and the tape and the tag and just the whole bag really.
I decided I’d better put a stop to that paper eating thing, so I nudged the bag and the real present fell out.
A duck! Like Duncan’s!
Skeeter loved it. For the three minutes it too, her to rip a hole in it and strip the squeaker.
And pull out all of the stuffing and bury it in the yard (briefly) so Koto couldn’t play with it.
Seriously. Three minutes.
She still loves the Duncan duck but not as much as she loved it while she was destroying it.
Charming and well-behaved at school and a holy terror at home.
I’m a pretty laid-back parent and have a high tolerance for rolling eyes, door slamming and backtalk from kids at home when they’re well-behaved outside of the home. I’ve always been of the mind that kids should feel that it’s ok, even encouraged, to lose their shit at home with the people who will love them even when they’re asshats. Everyone needs to blow off steam and meltdown. Everyone needs a safe place and safe people to test limits and boundaries with.
So yea, I’m laid back.
And maybe that attitude doesn’t really work with puppies?
The puppy goes to her training class and she does what she’s supposed to do, 90% of the time. Even when it’s a relatively new skill or command she grasps the idea quickly — do this, get treat, do this some more, get some more treats. Do this and get a treat at some point, keep doing this and yes the treats will come. Good dog! Yes!
At home, it all goes out the window.
YES! doesn’t necessarily get her attention anymore. Or it will get her attention but she’ll just stretch and yawn and then stand there and look at you. She probably will sit, if she’s sure you have a treat but she takes her sweet ass time about it. She will slowwwwwly jump down off of the bed, when she’s told to (and I do mean slowly, in case you change your mind or forget about her there) but when you’ve rolled over or gotten busy with work, she’ll be right back up there — testing you to see if you’ll make her get down again or let her stay.
I admit it. We’re letting her stay, sometimes.
That whole choosing your battles thing that works with kids, maybe isn’t the best idea for puppies? Oops.
This is not the post I planned to write today but since this month’s Nablo theme is “Work” it makes sense that I’m not writing it because of work related issues. And also because my tomorrow is shot to hell and it’s still today, so I will be working a 16 hour day today, after all.
And that’s what my life is like. In a nutshell. This also goes a long way to explain why I never blog here any more.
See, I had to write a blog post for Rita, due this weekend and I’d been putting it off for ages because I didn’t really know what to say. I finally figured it out and I wrote it and there went an hour of blogging time. When was the last time I spent an hour for a post on this blog? Forever, that’s how long it’s been.
Which led to MomofAli (Mom of Ali, dammit) showing me a photo of HER singing rat. Except hers never made noise because she found it, dead, at a playground. Heh. She thought it was a child’s toy and had no idea it was really a dog’s toy.
Which led me to do a wee video of Skeeter with her rat, so everyone could hear just what it sounded like, (that video is in the BlogHer post I linked above, so really, you should click that link whether you have a puppy or not. It’s worth it.) Except Skeeter wasn’t in the mood to play. She was too bloody busy cuddling with my woman — ON MY PILLOW.
Hmph.
Now back to work I go but at least I didn’t fail at December’s Nablo on day 3.
