The days have been filled with coffee and sugar cookies and more coffee. They have been runny nose, ear infection, pink-eye days, but they've been decorated with e e cummings poetry, plastic ornaments and pine needles.
On Monday I enlisted my mother to help me make Christmas sugar cookies. I have a hippopotamus cookie cutter that I break out for Christmas time, an ode to the immortal Christmas tune, "I want a hippopotamus for Christmas". I think it's hilarious but my dear mother was just...not impressed.
And she kept calling it a pig.
And she frosted all of my Christmas hippos green.
Nonetheless, they were delicious. Q was in charge of decorating them and he took his job very seriously. I'm still stepping on sprinkles. I am sorry to say that they are almost gone and it's only December 8.
My mother has been asking me why I haven't been blogging and there are lots of reasons, some big and some small, but mainly I've been distracted by conversations with my kids that challenge my ability to keep a straight face. Example:
"MOM! Come into the barn for the party!"
"Um, I'm trying to do dishes, then I'll come."
"NOOOO! You'll miss it, come now! Hurry"
So, I hurry to the playroom AKA barn. I say, "OOOH! Party!" and start to do a little shuffle with a side of a wiggle...
"MOM! NO! NO! You can't dance!"
"What kind of party is this! I thought you could dance at a party!"
"NO! Not this kind of party. Here! Here's your sword. You have to ask us what you can touch, because some of these things are dangerous. Like this, this dinosaur, it's dangerous....its...MATCHES. So, don't touch it. We are storm troopers, here we are to fight some bad guys."
"Storm troopers don't fight bad guys," I explain, crushing their dreams in the name of Star Wars accuracy, "They work for Darth Vader, who is a bad guy"
"Oh. Well, we are going to fight bad guys so we aren't Storm troopers. I'M SPIDER MAN! You're a storm trooper. Try to get us."
I do an interpretive dance with the foam sword. The baby laughs. I stab two boys in the bottom.
"MOM! Watch out! Tobin is Darth Vader. Run! RUN!"
I look at Tobin, who is in his exersaucer, chewing on his baby toy. He is super chubby and he has pink eye.
If there was a way to wrap all this madness up in a neat bow, I'd do it, but frankly I don't know how to wrap this thing up. So, THE END and Merry Christmas.
