Ode to Hode (Chapter the Third)

Today is my sister's 27th birthday. As has become my custom, I like to mark her big day with a list of the reasons she is awesome. Unfortunately my baby has a raging cold with lots of congestion that makes his little habit of sucking his thumb to go to sleep nearly physically impossible, so there's been a lot of hollering and not a lot of sleeping around here lately...and I'm starting this post at 9:30 p.m. after getting off the phone with said Hosedog. But I'm gonna power through this, because it's her birthday and I love her. So here goes.

1) Hode's blog is home to the most hilarious polls in the history of nonsensical internet polling, and they offer a window into the strange, strange place that is her psyche. One of her current polls is as follows: If you had to wear one of the following to work and act casual about it, which would it be: 1) A rubber Nixon mask 2) 12' of silver Christmas garland 3) Khakis intended for the opposite gender 4) A live monkey. Christmas garland is winning, but I went Nixon, FYI.

2) Hode does not read fiction or even superfluous nonfiction or anything resembling the crap that I tend to poison my own mind with, such as tawdry true crime novels and salacious biographies of assholes. In fact, 96% of the shit she reads is about the Arab-Israeli conflict, as far as I can tell, and the other 4% relates to the human destruction of our planet, and how she can personally go about reversing the damage. Fuck, if I was a social studies teacher who spent all day talking about serious shiz with a bunch of unstudious jerkwad 11th & 12th graders, I would not only subscribe to Us Weekly, but probably OK! and every other piece of celebrity trash I could get my hands on. Not Hode, no. Her summer reading list looks like the list you haul to the university bookstore to get the materials for a bunch of required classes you're really dreading.

3) The above should not lead you to think that Hode is unfun. Hode is real fun. Real funny, actually. She can make anything funny. Such as a funeral. Like the time we were at the funeral of our great aunt who we'd met like 8 time in our life, and she leaned over and whispered to me, "I dare you to bark." And then I started laughing hard enough to shake the pew. Uncontrollably. During a FUGGIN' FUNERAL. I pretended to be overcome with grief, but I don't think anyone bought it. And you know how when you get laughing with someone you're close with, and you just get calmed down, and then the other person starts again? Yeah. That. At a fuggin' funeral. We're really nice girls, really, we are.

4) Hode is obsessed with the wildlife in her area, and has developed a personal relationship with many specific animals that she sees on a regular basis. She gives them nice names too. For example, the fox. You know, the one she named Jamie Fox(x). One time this summer we were up in her 'hood, and she said, "Jamie Fox(x) lives right around here." Now, she does live in an attractive vacation destination, so it wasn't 100% out of the question that a celebrity could have a home in the area. So I was all like, "Really? No shit?" and then she was all nonchalant like, "No, Hode, my fox. You know, the fox I see all the time around here? The animal? I named him Jamie Fox(x)." (As an aside, I personally would really, really, really like to make out with the real Jamie Foxx, the man.)

5) Hode and I share the same brain. We have the same weird thoughts at the same time, and sometimes it's kinda freaky. For example, for the duration of our entire childhoods, we both thought that during the Lord's Prayer in church we were praying, "And deliver us from mevil"...mevil being of course some weird illness that was only discussed during this specific prayer, and which one definitely wanted to avoid. At some point during our twenties, one of us said to the other, "Dude, when I was a kid, I always thought we were praying to be delivered from this weird illness called "mevil" during the Lord's Prayer." And the other of us admitted to the same thing. The randoms like that between us are countless.

6) When Hode was a little kid, she liked weird toys and toys that are more commonly preferred by boys. She had a bunch of toy tractors, for example. Phook, as it turns out, is obsessed with tractors. This fall, my mom found Hode's childhood tractor stash, all beat up and with some war wounds from her various sandbox enterprises, and busted them out for Phook. And Phook of course loved them. It was Hode 2.0, and it was awesome.

7) Hode has identified more uses for the black bean than any other human I know. Hode frequently describes the random pantry/fridge-clearing dishes that she makes for herself, and without fail, her personal recipes wrap up with the statement, "And then I threw a handful of black beans in it."

8) Hode spent more than half of her very precious summer vacation this past year coming home to "nanny" for the K Family after the birth of Snuffle Pig. And while I was devastated when she left, I don't know if I had enough wits about me to fully appreciate it at the time...but thinking back, I may not have survived those first 6 weeks if she hadn't been here. She gave up some much-needed summer job income, her fun vacationland social life, and pretty much everything else she had going for her to come hang out in my den of the screaming newborn. Selfless girl, she is.

9) Hode handles me with care. Whereas a decade ago I couldn't have admitted to a personal flaw if someone had held a gun to my head, I am getting more in touch with the things about myself that are less than ideal. For example, I'm a really bad driver. I'm also just not very good at being careful. Hode knows about these weaknesses and all the rest. And she just calmly works around them. She nonchalantly just drives the car when we're together. And when I bash into something recklessly when I'm just walking around, she very soothingly says, "It's okay Hode; you're just not very good at being careful."

10) Just when you think it's going to be a bad day, Hode makes guacamole. I'm telling you, if you have a single guacamole ingredient in your house, Hode will find a way to make guacamole happen. She will get to the store or get her designated proxy to do the same, and by the end of a dreary day with Hode, she will have made homemade guacamole. And mashed up avocado is really what makes the world turn, right?

11) Hode has given herself an ulcer this year worrying about her students. While that is obviously less than ideal in about a million ways, it is who she is. I don't think Hode will ever turn into a jaded old teacher who just phones it in. Hode is always going to care, because it's elemental to her. She is going to care too much, in fact. But whose classroom do you want your child in: the teacher who cares too little, or the teacher who cares too much? Hode is a gift to her profession.

12) Hode is essentially a pacifist, but on exceedingly rare occasions she gets really pissed. Seriously, Hode is about as conflict-averse as they come. But every now and then, Hode loses her shit about something and gets ragingly mad and describes how she is going to kill or at least gravely maim the offending party. It's usually really graphic and specific and horrifying and tends to involve a reference to one of the Silence of the Lambs movies, and it is so rare and so intense for her to get to this level of rage that I absolutely live for it.

13) Hode took me on a trip to San Diego this year when I was harboring a fetal Pig. Enough said.

14) Hode likes to wear polo shirts in varying sleeve lengths. My mom kind of hates this about her, and I think that at least partially fuels Hode's desire to wear them often. The whole business is really kind of funny.

15) Hode's boyfriend is a basketball coach and he's really, really annoyingly into it. Last year, their long distance relationship barely made it through b-ball season, so single-minded and obsessive was the good chap. Her solution? This year she has informed him that if he overshares about basketball or otherwise compromises their relationship with his tunnel vision on the matter, she will take him to a chain restaurant where they sing annoying birthday tunes and tell them it's his birthday when it's not. He's got a raging case of social awkwardness to begin with, so this works to keep him in line. When he gets close to breaking the rules, she sings him happy birthday tunes as a reminder (she knows the actual words, which I can't explain).

16) Hode says that when she has little kids, she is going to lock them in a room naked with a tarp or something on the floor, set up gerbil feeders full of formula for them to eat, hook up a DVD player with a continuous loop of Disney movies playing, and just close the door. On the surface, that's kind of horrifying, but there are days when I'm thinking she knows what she's talking about. Plus, just being able to articulate that kind of child rearing game plan should win her some points for forethought.

17) Hode knows how to play cribbage. My aunt (more like a second mom who babysat us as kids) and uncle always played cribbage, and I thought it seemed really complicated and mysterious and I liked the little pegs. I never learned how to play cribbage, but Hode knows how.

18) Hode concerns herself with the matter of getting nice gifts for Big K. Most people really piss him off and get him shirts and stuff at Christmas when all he wants is money for a new video card, but Hode tries really hard to find him something he will like every year. Most people just get their brother-in-law the stupid shirt.

19) Hode is always on the lookout for products for me that will improve my quality of life. She informs me of new beauty products, cleaning products, "for a limited time only" food offers at restaurants, and the like. It's like how your grandma cuts out little things from newspapers and magazines and mails them to you, just without increasing your carbon footprint.

20) Hode is a gun-toting environmentalist who attends a conservative Christian church and rocks ferociously liberal politics. And she looks good while she does it. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

21) Hode prefers VHS to DVD because she can get tapes for like a nickel at Goodwill. I freaked the fug out the last time I was at her place and we had to REWIND something. Did you even remember rewind existed?

22) Hode calls me from the grocery store several times per month asking for recipes. She is standing in the aisle, I can hear fellow shoppers who all seem to know the celebrihode greeting her, and she urgently needs to know what goes in Mom's barbecues or what's in mostaccioli or some such shit because she's got to cook for a crowd of 20 softball players she's having over or she's in charge of concessions for some event and has decided to make a quintuple batch of something to sell. She's a fly-by-the-seat-of-her-pants-gal, that Hode.

23) Hode calls me a "sonofabitch" a lot. I like that.

24) Hode so loves my kids that all the students in her school know them. Phook's nickname at her school is the "boose" because some kid thought she looked like a cross between a beaver and a moose in the first shot shown in this early post, and it caught on. On a few occasions, we've gone to visit Hode at her school, and when we walk in, like 9 million random high schoolers start freaking out over Phook saying, "Is that the Boose?" "Oh my god, the Boose is here!" Hode's love is so intense that it has turned my kids into celebrities with a bunch of high schoolers, who the last time I checked were pretty good at not caring about anything.

25) Hode decorates with those weird glass heads that stores sometimes display hats on, and she's not ashamed of it.

26) Hode will do outlandish things for people and think nothing of it. She will be driving from eastern Wisconsin to central Wisconsin, and if a friend in Minnesota says they need a ride, she'll say, "Oh, yeah, I'll pick you up on my way."

27) Hode is always with me, even when we're apart. Hode and I are fused by an intense psychic bond. The phone always rings when I was just about to call. Hode is my person.

Happy 27th Birthday, Hosedog. You are awesome for the 27 reasons listed above, and for 27 million more.

I love you.

There's no place like home

I'm blogging this so I can never forget it...

When I was a little kid and when Big K was a little kid, our families both made a big deal about the annual broadcast of The Wizard of Oz when it was on TV. Nestling in for that movie every year was something my sister and I looked forward to, and I can actually remember many specific viewings of the movie, the way I felt during certain parts, how real certain things seemed to me, etc. Once it was on when we took a rare journey and stayed overnight at my cousins' house, and they lived a whole hour away. I couldn't have been more than eight years old, and I remember watching it there like it was yesterday. So when the movie was shown this year, we caught all of it except the first couple minutes on our DVR.

Now, Phook has never been much of a TV watcher...she has never been very interested in TV or movies, even when I was trying to get her to just be a good little zombie and watch something. But the last maybe 2 months or so, she has gotten to where she sometimes requests a movie from her giant stash of 2 Baby Einsteins, 1 Elmo, and 2 Wiggles movies (all gifts she received...and I am going to hunt down and kill whomever it was that gave us those fuggin' Wiggles). She also really got into Dancing with the Stars, because I let her. So she has been showing increasing interest, a development I've viewed with a combination of trepidation and guilty joy.

And then she met Dorothy. Phook, my friends, oh how she loves the Wizard of Oz. It took like one showing, and since then it has been, "Watch Dorothy please?" every 45 seconds for the last several weeks. I'm not going to lie to you people, the child is watching it at a rate of at least once per day, twice if the grandparents come over and want to revel in her sitting still and snuggling with them. I've turned it into a currency of sorts...if she is good/eats well/naps well/etc. she can watch Dorothy after her nap. The child can now tell me in what order Dorothy will encounter the scarecrow, tinman, and lion. The lion, she tells me, will jump into the road and will "put 'em up, put 'em up." In short, she has the thing pretty near memorized. And today, she started saying, "There's no place like home" in the sweetest voice I've ever heard, thereby ensuring that I will not be declaring an Oz moratorium any time soon.

So tonite was such an occasion when the grandparents were over...it was my dad's birthday today and they came over for supper, followed by apple crisp, gift opening, and a mandatory showing of Dorothy. They left before the movie was over, and I decided that I too could take advantage of a good snuggling opportunity, so Phook and I kept watching. I was lying on the couch and she was sitting in the bird's nest (that would be our family's term for the space made between an adult's legs and the back of the couch where a kid can snuggle in). It got to the part where Dorothy is sitting on the steps outside the entrance to where the wizard lives, and having been informed that she should go away because the wizard was refusing to see her, she begins to cry. As this occurred, I looked up at Phook, and saw one of the saddest little things mine eyes have ever fallen upon. Phook's face dropped, her lower lip extended in that pre-cry face that only little kids can make with sincerity, her eyes got wide and welled up, and giant tears started to drop out of her eyes. I could tell she was trying to keep it together, but was overcome with emotion and could not help herself. I said, "Phook, what's wrong?" and, trying so hard to hold it together, Phook said in the saddest, quietest little voice, "Dorothy go home?" I said, "Are you sad because Dorothy is crying because she wants to go home?" And Phook peeped out, "Uh huh." OH MY GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Can you even imagine? It was so raw I just about died.

This was like the 9 millionth time she's seen this, and I've been by her side through a fair amount of her viewing and never witnessed this emotion. She sometimes dives on top of me when the witch melts, but I've never seen her get so invested in it before. But I've also noticed that lately, particularly when the witch is in pursuit of Dorothy toward the end of the movie, Phook is asking, "Dorothy? Dorothy?" whenever Dorothy is out of the picture. I think she is getting more and more attached to Dorothy and invested in her well-being and her quest to get home. The level of empathy I saw in Phook tonite was unprecedented. I'm kind of shaken up a bit by it, actually. She clearly loves the movie, but I don't want to stress the poor kid out because she's so worried about Dorothy. How does the 2-year-old mind even process that kind of thing? I guess we will just have to talk it through and talk it through and then talk it through.

So there it is, recorded for all eternity. The first time the emotions of another brought Phook to tears.

Morning and Night

I was, with varying levels of intensity at various times during my pregnancy with Snuffle Pig, worried about how I would have special quality time with each of my children. While it is true that my days are a juggling act of which little person's needs are more emergent (as indicated by decibel level), there are stolen moments for each child each day. But beyond that, we have settled into a little pattern here that I particularly like, and I'm going to tell you about it.

Mornings are for Snuffy. Every morning, Snuffy wakes up in the neighborhood of 6 a.m., and Big K generally ventures out to pluck him from his crib. Then he brings The Pig to me, and we nurse. We both doze and snuggle and generally enjoy some quality sleepytime. And then eventually Snuffy starts rooting around in a less comatose way, and I prop him up in bed on my pillow, and as he really officially wakes up, he sees me and starts his daily smile-a-thon. He is so excited to start the day. He's just a chubalicious butterball, busting out of his blanket sleeper, his cheeks all red from the hour or so of nuzzling. Although I am the antithesis of a morning person, that smile does indeed give me the jolt I need to gear up into another day. That and the fact that at this point Phook is usually coming up the stairs saying, "Mama, awake, please!" or really knocking it out of the park by dangling a cold noodle in my face or pressing a sticker onto my drool-covered cheek.

But I digress. I love this time with just him. Big K gets up with Phook and feeds her breakfast (the other day she had half of a corn dog, I think...oh how I wish I was kidding...but you win some, you lose some). Anyhow, it is special reserved Mom 'n Pig time. It is reminiscent of what I had with Phook in the rich supply you can only experience with your first child...that special physical bonding time. I sniff him. I snuggle him. After he wakes up, I gnaw on him a bit and make him do those weird grunty baby laughs. It is precious snuggly time, and I thank his fatness for keeping him relatively immobile so far...I know it is only a matter of time until he begins to protest this drawn out snuggly morning business.

And then there are nights. Nights are for Phook. I know that bedtime can be a highly unpleasant proposition for many parents of toddlers, but we are exceedingly lucky in that Phook generally goes to bed without incident. There is the occasional howl when bedtime is mentioned, but by and large, she just rolls with it. So we brush her teeth, collect her blankies, and head up to bed. We select a few books and a few dozen stuff animals, and crawl in her bed. One of the profoundly awesome things about having a kid in an actual bed is that you can nestle right in with them. So I'll crawl in there and read some stories, and then she'll "read" some stories. And then we shut off the light and talk about our day. We've been "talking about our day" since she was perhaps a year old or so or maybe a little older...whenever it was that her mobility-induced snuggling strike finally wound down. It started with me just running through the events of the day and forecasting the events of tomorrow with her intently listening, but of course it is becoming more and more of a conversation as her verbal skills go bonkers.

Phook has always seemed to enjoy this ritual of sitting (now lying) in the dark, discussing the mundane or the exciting events in our lives. She sucks her fingers and strokes her blankie and just generally relaxes into sleepiness while I yammer, and she contributes as she sees fit. But a few weeks ago I began to realize how much she loves this ritual when she started saying, "Do a-day" as soon as I'd stop talking. I was trying to figure out what a "doaday" was in Phookspeak, and then I finally realized she was saying "do today" as a way of telling me she wanted me to talk more about our day. When she is actually trying to talk to me rather than just jabbering, I probably understand 80% of what she is saying at this point, but occasionally she stumps me and then eventually I unlock her meaning a few days down the road as more context clues emerge. When I figured this one out, I just about melted. She definitely likes to go through what has happened and what will happen, and I can tell that even at her young age, she values this special quiet time. She also learned the word "snuggle" awhile ago and makes requests for that on occasion as we lie in bed, which is enough to straight liquefy me.

So that is how I do it, for now at least. That is how I turn what sometimes feels impossible into the possible. Mornings are for Snuffy. Nights are for Phook. It's kind of nice to look forward to the sunrise. And the sunset.

From the Phook files

I don't know if you people read what my commenters have to say, but in response to my last post, my sister threatened to take matters into her own hands and blog about an occurrence here in the House of K about which she has insider knowledge. The incident in question involves Phook "smacking her own ass." So now I have to tell you about it.

Okay, I know that the majority of good parents out there are big on teaching their kids the appropriate terms for their various body parts, and by and large, we here are also on that bandwagon. But you cats have probably also caught on to the fact that we use a bit of our own dialect here, and I like to sort of speak outside the box, if you will. One area where these worlds collide is in ass-related nomenclature. I am fond of the word "heinie" in reference to the buttocks. But I have to tweak it a little bit, in keeping with my general disrespect for the English language, so I just call it a "hein." I pretty much always call Phook's butt her hein. When I see it, I say, "Nice hein." When I apply diaper rash ointment to her butt, I call it "hein cream." When she has a red butt, I say, "Do you have a sore hein?" You surely get it.

Now Phook has grown up on this wonky Big W dialect, so she too now uses the word hein. She also says butt, but hein is her preferred term. As in, "[Phook] has sore hein. I need hein cream." Okay, got it Phook.

So, the ass smacking.

The other night, we were getting Phook nakey for the business of bathing. She was running around in the buff, generally reveling in her awesome nudity. Big K was the one getting ready to give her a bath, and I was in the kitchen feeding Snuffy. All of a sudden, Phook darted out from the bathroom, ran up to Snuffy, turned, smacked her own butt with attitude, and yelled, "Look [Snuffy], hein!" and ran back from whence she came. Big K and I seriously died.

About 10 minutes later, Phook was in the tub, and I took Snuffy in the bathroom to get him ready to dunk in her dirty bath water. He was covered in squash that he'd been eating for supper, and I was using the toilet as a chair where I was sitting getting him naked. I pulled off his dipe haphazardly, and was met with a surprise poo. I started screaming, and yelled out, "I am covered in squash and defecation!" (That really is an exact quote, I'm not cleverly disguising use of profanity in front of the children.) Phook of course heard me yell this, and chirped, "I wanna see!" She then leaned out of the tub to crane her neck around to where Snuffy and I were dealing with the mayhem. Upon seeing me covered in, well, squash and defecation, she yelled out, "OH GOD!" and then went back to her important business of dumping water all over the place. (Perhaps we'll work on saying "Oh gosh!" at some point in the future, but it was beyond hilarious for her to just bust out with that.)

This full sentence talking business is really yielding us some gems. Lots of real knee-slappers. Or ass-slappers, as it were.

News from here

Friends, all two of you that are still reading, I am really sorry for the lack of posting. I think about calling you all the time...I just haven't had the time to pick up the phone. I have just been busy, what can I say? This gainful employment business (as limited as it may be) coupled with holiday preparations have kind of been lapping up every last minute of my already limited free time. I feel it's necessary to say something, so I'm just going to share some K Family updates.

*****

The other day, I was baking some Christmas cookies. Phook was phooking around in the kitchen, doing inventory control on my tote box full of assorted flavors of baking chips and candy coatings and mayhem, and I pulled a cookie sheet out of the oven. She looked over and said, "Those look really good Mommy." (Or, rather, "Dose wook weewy good Mommy.") For those of you with children who were rocking simple sentences at 18 months, this is not noteworthy. For those of us with kids who have taken their sweet time getting on the verbal bandwagon, (me), this is possibly the most beautiful and sophisticated thing you could ever imagine your child saying. Furthermore, this is the sort of thing that makes living a lifestyle of the utterly domestic all worth it. My kid complimented my cookie. The universe therefore provided me with a much-needed hug.

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We got a snowblower. We have been homeowners for 5 1/2 years, but we never needed one until now. Our kind elderly neighborlady, with whom we have a shared driveway, has a brother who always came and plowed us out with a bobcat. Granted, he ripped up my garden boxes, upended and cracked my kid's sandbox, and ruined the grass for 18 inches on either side of the sidewalk every year, but beggars can't be choosers. The guy has come every snowfall for years and dug us out, which is a major bonus. Unfortunately, our neighbor has been in poor health for a good long while, and the time has come for her to move in with her daughter. Hence, the era of free snow removal has come to a close. So we rocked out craigslist and what have you and eventually ended up going with a very, very used model from a semi-local small engine place. (These things are expensive.) I swear to you that Big K has been on a bit of a high since we got it. When we were driving to pick the thing up, he told me the story of how when he was a legitimately impoverished youngster, he spent every snow day shoveling out his driveway with his brothers. At the time, he thought that only extremely rich people had snowblowers. So having "made it" to the point where he could afford a snowblower, however rusty, was a seriously big moment for him. It was really rather touching to hear him say this. And now he is calling it his "rich man's machine." As in, "I'm going to go outside and use my rich man's machine." I love it.

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I am the strongest woman in the known universe who is not competitively training for a major athletic endeavor. Here's the thing. Five-month-old babies are typically not very skilled at self-care. Or locomotion. So as the mother of such a young child, you find yourself moving the kid about pretty much constantly throughout the day. There is also the standard hijinx of lifting the child in the air above one's head for the purposes of blowing on belly, jostling the creature as a stream of drool snakes out of their mouth down toward your own face, etc. The thing is, my 5-monther weighs as much as your 1-year-old...you know, the one that can walk and fetch his own shoes? I am certain he has crested 20 pounds, which means I am doing several hundred reps of 20 pounds per day...not to mention that I have a 30+ pound 2-year-old who requires a fair amount of lifting herself. Sometimes I carry them at the same time. Up stairs. If I were not encircled with an exoskeleton of chub, well, you'd be scared of me.

I submit the following. The other day, we were finishing up the winterizing of our yard (just in the nick of time, I might add). We have one of those giant yard swings with a metal frame and a canopy over the top, and we were going to move it about 30 feet across our yard. We've moved this thing 9,000 times since we got it, and it never fails to be a bitch. I lift one side, Big K the other. In years past, whenever we have moved this thing, I have been able to carry it about 18 inches before I need a rest. The sucker is seriously heavy. This year, we hauled it the entire 30 feet without a rest. Oh, and Phook was lying on the swing while we did it. It felt like I was maybe carrying a large basket full of laundry. I have the biceps of a farmhand. I'm wondering if I should try to get involved in doing some hustling on the arm wrestling circuit.

****

I am excited for Christmas. Unlike recent years past, when I've been having some kind of boiling rage/melancholy/shitteousness pulsing through my veins this time of year, I am actually pretty jazzed for the affair. We did all our decorating the day after Thanksgiving, complete with my now-standard second tree, a.k.a. the "food tree." When I put up my tree(s) and light some candles and turn off all the other lights in the house and there is this warm white-light glow and I see the stockings hanging there with my kids' names on them, well, it's sort of like someone dumped a giant bucket of "How lucky are you?" over my head. The trees go up, and the kids are in bed, and I stand in this one particular spot in my dining room from where I can see both trees, and I look at all my fairly lovely furniture and precious things I have amassed over the years, and I want to beat myself mercilessly for ever uttering time-worn phrases about my "poverty" when I am clearly standing in the middle of what the majority of the residents of this planet would consider a palace. That reminder is my Christmas spirit.

I think that perhaps my intense love affair with Snuffy has a lot to do with my overall joyous and festive demeanor. And Big K seems to be coming out of a long, difficult, and primarily work-induced dark period, which makes everything so much nicer for everyone. And Phook is excited this year. She likes the trees, especially the food one. She likes naming all the various produce items on the tree, and searching for the avocado and what have you. (Because everyone should have an avocado ornament, really.) She is aware that someone named Santa will be showing up with presents. We were reading this (excellent) book called Bear Stays Up for Christmas, and there is a page with Santa on it. I told her Santa would be coming with presents for her, and she indicated that he'd be coming in her bedroom window. And then I was worried I'd give her some weird boogeyman fears if I said some dude would come in her window, so I just tried to act casual about the whole business of how these presents would arrive. But she is still indicating Santa is coming through the window, and seems comfortable with that idea. She has been especially tired the last several days, and I'm kind of wondering if she is lying there at night waiting for him...

Anyhow, I am excited. I'm not particularly stressed. I'm baking at a steady rate, and Phook is down with that:


There were some serious shenanigans regarding my father showing up and offering my kid unauthorized suckers in the middle of my highly orchestrated Christmas card photo shoot, so there will be no photo of the children together on this year's card. I had purchased matching Christmas sleepers and laid out this festive background on which to take the photo, but it all just kind of exploded. So I ended up getting a cute picture of each of them individually, and then I spent the better part of a day searching online for a card format that had spots for 2 equally sized photos that didn't cost an arm and a leg...but all's well that ends well. (And if you're having a similar dilemma, I'll save you the time and provide you with this link to the place I ended up going with. Oh, and if you use coupon code 16118 you'll get free shipping on orders over $35. Don't ever say I don't love you.)

So, anyhow, Christmas is coming, and this year that is a good thing.

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On a related note, I saw possibly the strongest evidence to date that Phook is a genius, or at least has some sort of aptitude beyond the norm. I normally shy away from claims about her intelligence even when she obviously displays it, because I don't want to be one of those clown parents bragging about their gifted kid as I can see the kid licking the carpet or something out of the corner of my eye. I'm more inclined to jokingly call my kids paste eaters and then let people come to their own conclusions. But something occurred the other day that actually kind of freaked me out. Snuffy was napping, and Phook and I were wrapping presents, which is to say that I was attempting to wrap presents with nothing resembling efficiency while she was taping herself to things and destroying several yards of wrapping paper for sport. As I'd finish a gift, I'd hand it to her to put on the pile. And I guess I'd casually say, "This is for Grandpa" or "This is for Auntie Hode" or "This is for Baby C*****" or "This is for Uncle Rocky" or whatever, but it was wholly absentminded of me and I was by no means making a point of telling her who each gift was for. And then I noticed she was saying the names of all of our aforementioned loved ones, plus others of course. And then I noticed she was accurately identifying packages by their intended recipient. Okay, I use no more than 3 different kinds of wrapping paper, and the majority of these things were in square boxes. And she was telling me who these gifts were for (out of a pile with at least 30 packages in it) with like 80% accuracy. I was actually getting kind of queasy because it so weirded me out. I was like, "Dude, what all are you storing up in that brain of yours?" The disparity between what a child knows and what they can say is rather profound at a certain point in a young life, but once language starts to catch up, revealing the secrets of their mind to you...well, shit, look out. I'm still kind of weirded out by it. When Big K came home from work hours later, I hauled her upstairs to repeat the show for him, and she did not disappoint. I don't know man, I don't know.

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Phook, in general, has taken to sharing with Snuffle Pig. Lately I have found that this extends to her snacks. I cannot tell you how often I have come upon The Pig and found him adorned with a snack of late. Well, one day I saw brown stuff smashed all over his shirt, and after initially thinking he was leaking something terrible, I realized that Phook had shared a Nilla wafer and Snuffy had done his best to get a taste. (Sorry, Big K...I forgot to tell you about that incident...and now you're getting a newsflash via my blog. Oops.) The day before yesterday, she peeled herself a clementine and then headed out into the living room with a bowl full of the little sections. She had to pass Snuffy in the doorway on her way out of the kitchen, and when I looked up at him I saw this:


Dude, I love that she just stealthily leaves him a snack on his chest. Okay, okay, it's not ideal from a choking hazard perspective, but it's still really cute. And I'm clearly not an expert at child safety these days anyhow.

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I'm shedding. I know there is standard post-pregnancy hair loss, but fuck. I experienced a bit of hair loss post-Phook, but this is off the chain. I have to clean out the shower drain daily, and I get a gerbil out of there. Then I comb my hair and pull a handful off the comb. Then I put my anti-frizz gel stuff in my hair and come away with hands full of hair. Then I pick hair out of my food. Then I pull hair out of the dish rag. Then I vacuum the furniture every other day. Then I go through a lint roller weekly. I know this is "normal" but it doesn't feel that way. I'm seriously wondering when it will stop and what will be left. I'm also yearning to chop it off. It is mid-back, possibly longer I guess. It would probably be to the back of my knees if it weren't curly. The desire to go for a chop is profound. I essentially have not had different hair since I got a chin-length bob my freshman year of college, which was in 1997. There are 2 things holding me back. 1) Fear of regret and 2) Any reduction in ease-of-use. I can't have hair that requires more time than zero minutes. Okay, fine, two minutes, once you count combing, gel application, and wadding it up in a ponytail holder. But I can't go to three. So I feel like I'm locked in. But then again, what is the point of having all this wondrous hair if I'm just turning it into a big rambunctious bun or a big braid or ponytail every day? I don't know. I spend more and more time pondering this every day, and I have a good friend who is having a similar debate with herself in anticipation of her 40th birthday, so that's got me thinking too. So I'm shedding, I'm antsy with my remaining hair, and I should probably mention that I have an appointment to have something done with the whole mess on Sunday. Should I chop or trim, friends?

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Okay, so that was a lot. Perhaps I should have been blogging more. Here's hoping your December has got you feeling fine...