Great Pumpkin Presents

Because I love buying treats for the adorable little moppets in my life, we gave my niece Makayla a little present this weekend and we said that it was from The Great Pumpkin. (BTW: Hi, Joey! Your birthday gift is going in the mail tomorrow!)

She had absolutely ZERO idea what to do with it. Clearly it wasn't food, so she just sort of looked at it for a while until Shae stepped in to "help." (Ha.) I don't remember what age kids are when they first start to love tearing into wrapping paper, but evidently it is sometime after 10 months. Maybe closer to two? (Which means next Christmas, 2012, will be a RIOT.)

What Makayla did love? Was watching Shae rip the ever-living snot out of the tissue paper and undo the curling ribbon holding the package together. (I didn't use tape on this one, because somewhere back in the lizard part of my brain, I got the idea that tape was "bad for babies." Why I thought a four-foot string of shiny ribbon would be okay is beyond me. I am admittedly not the brightest crayon in the box.)

And of course -- and I say this as an almost 40-something -- whipping tissue paper around the room is a practically overwhelming amount of fun. I still like to do it, I am not going to lie: tossing around balls of crumpled-up gift wrap is one of my favorite sources of holiday amusement. (Largely because we have easily entertained cats, but still.)

Everybody loves tissue paper and presents from The Great Pumpkin. YAY!

Easter 2011, Part One: At Home

How is it possible that Easter is the longest freakin' day of the entire year? Can someone tell me that, please? It's exactly as much running around as there is on Christmas, and the weather is generally better, but yet somehow Easter manages to be like three times as long as Christmas is. I really am surprised we survived the whole thing, honestly, and that doesn't even count the part where we were driving home in the pouring rain and trying not to hydroplane into a ditch on the side of the road.

Maybe someone did not have enough Easter candy. (I had only two pieces, actually -- two homemade peanut butter eggs. No, really. I had cake and pie and ice cream cake and ham out the stinkin' wazoo, but not very much candy. Someone obviously did Easter wrong.)

Because I knew that it was going to be a Gift Extravaganza -- and it was, our whole trunk was filled with stuff when we came home yesterday -- Shae's basket from us was pretty small. She knows that Easter is all about candy, so we weren't able to entirely avoid it, but I kept it to a minimum, in easily parcel-out-able containers. Peeps, Good and Fruity, jellybeans, candy rings, and Goldfish grahams.

Also: plastic eggs full of money (6 eggs, $3 total), and all the Shrek movies, which as far as we know, she hasn't seen, yet she knows who Shrek is anyway. I don't know. Osmosis, maybe?

Okay, look: this kid is THE WORST "Price is Right" product model EVER. Or else she is secretly the best. I'm not really sure. Why her first impulse is to cover her face with the item she is showing, I have no idea, but she did that EVERY SINGLE TIME, with EVERY SINGLE THING.

Also: yes, my kid got Tinkerbell Band-Aids in her Easter bucket, SHUT UP. She got an EASTER BUCKET, what do you expect?

Yeah, you got me. At this point it's only 8:00 in the morning, so it's not like it's the end of a really long day or anything. She's just ... that kid who likes to put buckets on her head.

Same Old Lang Syne

OH MY GOD YOU GUYS WE ARE STILL OPENING CHRISTMAS PRESENTS.

Now with 100% more Joey. (Okay, yes I know that technically it's "infinity percent" more Joey because previously there was no Joey and now there is and something about dividing by zero and whatnot but if I were any good at The Maths I wouldn't have a degree in Writing for Television and instead I would be Danica McKellar.)

(Okay, FINE: if I were good at The Maths and I were a COMPLETE HOT BABE, I'd be Danica McKellar. Whatever. Everybody's a pedant on the Internet, aren't they?)

When I am old and decrepit and senile, I hope one of the things that I still remember is how much fun it is to watch small children tear into wrapping paper.

And then run around the living room with their presents on their head.

Don't let this face fool you -- Shae is actually very excited about getting Princess Ring Pops as a gift, and on our way home last night she kept asking about them. "Did you bring my ring pops? You didn't forget them, did you?"

Hmm. Looks like SOMEBODY is getting sick of posing for pictures in front of various Christmas trees. Which means it's time to blackmail SOMEBODY into compliance by threatening to take away their Princess Ring Pops.

Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas

When this post goes up, we'll hopefully still be nestled, all snug in our beds, with visions of sugarplums dancing in our heads -- unless someone gets indigestion or has bad dreams or something. That's been known to happen around here. But when we finally get up and about, we'll see that Santa has been here, and he left us some goodies.

We're lucky that Santa stops by our house early, sometimes well before midnight on Christmas Eve. I think it's because he knows this neighborhood is dicey and nobody wants to be here late if they don't have to -- who knows what kind of ill shit might happen? And to be honest, I am perfectly okay with this arrangement, because I am not sure that my homeowner's policy covers damage to sleighs on the roof, and if anything happened to Kris Kringle or one of those poor reindeer I know the guilt would kill me dead.

Oh, and Santa has authorized me to divulge the following: Shae's getting her stinking cramera. God help us all.

Obviously we're going to be busy today, as are you, I imagine. Hope whoever you're sharing the holiday with is as awesomely adorable as Those Two Up There, who will continue to be the Center Of The Universe for another few days or so. Catch you later!

Hark the Herald Angels Sing

I was totally going to write this Christmas Eve post about "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost and how it's one of my very favorite poems and I think it's about Santa taking a rest for a thermos full of Irish coffee halfway through his rounds and it was going to be all pensive and thoughtful and tender and existential and English major blahblahblah but I changed my mind because I GOT SOME PRESENTS!

And even better -- they're the HOMEMADE CRAFT PROJECT KIND.

Yes, we got the usual assortment of handprint poems and construction paper stockings decorated with glitter and cotton balls and tempera paint, and those are of course awesome, but two of the gifts in particular are SPECTACULAR and right now I have to say that I am TOTALLY IN LOVE with Shae's pre-school teachers because these craft projects are pretty kick-ass.

First up:

A frickin' water globe. This is way impressive. It's so simple -- your basic water and glitter inside a Ball jar -- but it's the simplicity of it that makes it so wonderful. I mean, who doesn't love water globes? I know Shae loves playing with water globes (we've already broken two this year) so I can just imagine how much fun it was to actually make one. But it is the cute little details that make it so extra special, like the picture of Shae sealed inside the lid and the compass in the stock and this thing which tells time and the little ornament that floats inside:

I am so enamored of this thing, in fact, that I might try to make some as gifts next year, if I don't forget all about it by then. But the very best present of all is my new favorite ornament that we have put in a place of honor on the tree, up near the star:

How precious is that? A little angel made of toilet paper rolls and tinsel, with her little face on it? I mean, it's not quite the soft glow of electric sex gleaming in the window but CAN YOU IMAGINE THE ADORABILITY OF THIS THING? Sweet cracker sandwich. Now I know why, for years and years, my mother had boxes of ornaments that we made in school, carefully wrapped in tissue and newspaper, packed away in a box, kept away from everything else where it would be safe.

And that is the true Christmas miracle, right there: that I am turning into my mother a little more every day AND I DON'T EVEN CARE. Not one bit. Because you totally know I'm going to get some kind of plexiglas action-figure box to keep this ornament in, I love it so.

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In all seriousness, whatever you're doing this Christmas Eve: be careful, be safe, and most of all, be loved. Remember that we've all got miles to go before we sleep. Merry Christmas, and may God bless us, every one. xoxo.

Brown Paper Packages Tied Up With Strings

I'm trying to get those gosh darn Christmas calendars done and I wanted to make sure I had enough good pictures to use for the December pages, so yesterday I planned a little "photo shoot" for when I got home from work, complete with a prop -- an office supply box that I fished out of the recycling at work, that I then wrapped for Shae to tear into, so I could capture the "magic moment" on film.

This is the point where I tell her there is nothing in the box. She actually handled it pretty well, though -- I told her that she was allowed to play with the box, the paper, whatever she wanted, as long as she didn't touch the Christmas tree or any ornaments, and as long as she helped us clean up before bathtime. For as clean as she is, she does enjoy making a mess from time to time. As we all do. (And she wore the box on her head for a while, and called it a "robot hat." Love this kid!)

I have been worrying though, lately, that I am turning into (or already am) one of those "paparazzi parents," the ones who go nowhere without their digital camera, ready to document anything and everything that might happen. Just in case, you know? It does concern me that maybe my own kid wouldn't be able to pick me out of a lineup, but she can identify my camera from 100 paces. I mean, for crap's sake: I planned a photo shoot for my own kid, in my own house! And the only thing she wants for Christmas is her own "cramera!"

Like any decent and reasonable person, I want to take whatever means are necessary to keep my kid from turning into one of those awful, awful people on shows like "The Hills" or "Keeping Up With The Kardashians." I mean, I think we're going to be fine, because nobody really cares about our life, since we're so average and ordinary and normal in every way (except for the monkeyshit craziness, of course, but even that is your typical kind of monkeyshit craziness).

Still and all, I wonder if maybe we are teaching her bad habits, because I spend so much time being Madame Director instead of being Mommy. I have spent approximately eleventy bajillion hours working on these calendars, and at least half that trying to direct my kid so that I could get the pictures that I want, so as to convey the image that I want, so I could make the pages turn into what I imagined them to be.

And I don't want to be one of those parents, one of those stage or pageant moms.

I don't want to make her into anything other than what she already is, which is COMPLETELY AWESOMESAUCE. She already makes me so happy.

Early Anniversary Present

Well son of a bitch. Looks like G is trying to FORCE me to learn to use Photoshop after all. The rat fink.