Category Archives: Festivities

It came without ribbons! It came without tags!

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The impending combination of lunar eclipse, full moon, winter solstice, and winter break is wreaking havoc on my house.  Faced with the first day of no school, Mark unravelled a little bit.  I have noticed this phenomenon before, and so I know it is short lived, which is fortunate, because otherwise I would need to lock myself in the bathroom with a bottle of wine and a Candace Bushnell novel.  It’s not like it is some go-with-the-flow free-for-all around here.  The boys still get dressed in the morning and we maintain some semblance of a routine, even on holidays, but even so Mark has a tendency to unravel in the face of freedom from school routines.  So far he has drawn upwards of twenty pictures today, coloured in his Bakugan sticker book, and reorganized his collection of dinosaurs and Bakugan balls.  All that in between snapping at his brother who, in the face of freedom from school routines, copes by hugging, pulling at, and generally invading Mark’s personal space.  Hence my longing for chick lit and wine.  As I said, though, if history is any indication, by tomorrow things will be running much more smoothly around here.
It probably doesn’t help that my kids are also completely jacked up on sugar, thanks to the generosity of my beautiful friends who are responsible for my kitchen full of delicious treats including chocolates, homemade truffles and candies, and miniature cakes in the shapes of gifts, complete with fondant bows and decorations.  Not to mention many bottles of wine, which just goes to show how well they know me.  Did I mention I love my friends?  I love my friends.  I’m so blessed.
When we talk to the kids about Christmas we try to focus on time with friends and family, good food, joy, and love, but inevitably things come down to gifts.  I think gifts are a lovely part of Christmas – I still recall the feeling of seeing the dollhouse my grandfather made for me when I was five – but I do find it curious that if you are attempting to shift the focus away from getting, the first thing people ask your children is what they asked Santa Claus for.  Everywhere we are inundated with messages of consumerism, and commercialism, and your-Christmas-will-be-ruined-if-you-get-the-wrong-gift, and I find it fairly vile.  It reminds me of commercials for engagement rings, of the “show her how much you love her” variety.  When it became apparent that my husband and I would be married, I spoke out against diamond rings as a tool for commercialism, artificially inflated values, and ostentatious displays of wealth.  Tool of the patriarchy and a strike against feminism!  And so I don’t have a diamond ring, smart girl that I am.
It’s a hard balance.  I think my children have so much that they couldn’t possibly want or need anything else, I think sometimes they are completely spoiled and indulged, and yet we do buy our children toys and books at Christmas, and they do get many things from their doting grandparents and aunts and uncles, and if you think for one second that I’m going to call up my mother-in-law and tell her not to send her only two grandchildren any more gifts because they already have more than enough, well, then you have another think coming.  The only result of that kind of conversation would be of the “No One Here Gets Out Alive” variety.  And so I try to suggest gift ideas that will allow for much creative play, and that will last a long time, and that will not break instantly so that they can eventually be donated when outgrown.  I want my kids to enjoy their gifts, but more than anything I want for them to remember the holidays as a time of tree decorating and gingerbread disasters, and playing in the snow and parties with friends.  I want them to appreciate what they have and remember those who want for things, and yet still enjoy the pleasures of childhood.  Is that too large of a Christmas wish?

Nicole the Elf! What’s your favourite song?

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Today is the last day of school before the break, and I’m relieved.  There was a time when I did not understand this phenomenon, but I do now.  It’s not like our mornings are crazily rushed – by the time the school bell rings the kids have been up for a minimum of two hours, and I’ve been up for at least four.  This is a good thing because to save my sanity I inform Jake that he must start getting dressed at 8:00, so by the time we leave the house at 8:45 he is generally dressed.  Except for socks, which for some reason must only be put on right before boots and with much encouragement from me. 
But oh, I am ready for a break!  My holiday spirit took a little bit of a beating this week and it was all because of the pediatric dentist.  I now have reminders to never again make a dental appointment in December.  The dentist’s office shares a parking lot with Wal-Mart.  Have you attempted to find parking in a Wal-Mart parking lot at 1:00 in the afternoon ten days before Christmas?  I do not recommend it.  There are angry people everywhere.  Very, very angry people.  So I was feeling a bit flustered even before the appointment, which in itself is a trying experience: I have one child who sits quietly, mouth wide open, for the entire process, and one who seems to have some sort of sensory integration issues the minute the chair goes back as he starts to go stiff, hold his breath, and gag.  It’s sad because he is truly trying his best, he really is, he sits perfectly still for x-rays and teeth counting but the second the hygienist snaps that little toothpaste container on her finger, he goes a little nuts.  So that was fun. 
Then, the dentist came in.  Remember the dentist?  The very attractive dentist?  Well, evidently the past six months have not been good to him because I would not now describe him as the hot, crush-inspiring pediatric dentist he once was.  Of course, that is very shallow and superficial of me but come on.  I’m a stay-at-home mom.  I wore my nice jeans and my good lipstick.  Throw me a bone, here, people.
By the end of the appointment, I had a choice: I could just keep Mark home for the remainder of the afternoon, or I could rush him back to school in time for him to have recess and sing carols, only to rush back to the school to pick him up.  Lazy mom that I am, I just went home.  I was in need of some holiday spirit.  So I decided to make gingerbread people with the kids and listen to Christmas carols.
What’s your favourite Christmas song?  Mine is – despite assertions from certain people that this song causes brain aneurisms – the Wham! Christmas song.  I listened to it a number of times and felt much better.  Also on my list, Santa Baby, which I know is commercial and everything I try not to be but hey, it is so much fun to sing.  I like to sing it in a slutty, I’m-a-lounge-singer-who-is-lying-on-a-grand-piano-wearing-a-spangly-dress-slit-up-the-side kind of way.  With a long cigarette holder.  You get the picture.  Although I have to wonder, what is the market for sables like these days?  Is the fur industry even around anymore?  I don’t know.  Tied for third are Feliz Navidad and Mele Kalikimaka: “Hey!” Mark said, “I think that means Merry Christmas in another language!”
So tell me, what do you like to listen to around the holidays?  The one song I cannot stand is I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus.  It is just way too creepy.  It just conjures up images of, how shall I put this politely, a child stumbling into an intimate situation involving lap sitting and queries of “Have you been a good girl this year?”  If you know what I’m saying. 
On that note, here are some g-rated pictures of me attempting to get the children to a) look at me and b) smile while making gingerbread.  You can see how well I succeeded.
“Okay guys, look at me.”

“Guys, look at me.”

“Okay, good, Jake, but maybe with a less angry face.”

“Um.”

“Mark, I meant to look and smile, not start eating the cookies.”

Yeah.  So I didn’t get the picture I was hoping for.  But it was fun!

Adventures in Gingerbread

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Well, it’s the holiday season, and you know what that means!

Look at those excited faces. 

GINGERBREAD HOUSES!

I have to admit, I was pretty nervous about the whole thing.  It’s not like I pretend to be Amazing Crafty Mom, but remember last year?

Note the sad, sliding wreath, stopped only by the sad, sliding candy door.

Those yellow candies were supposed to be gravestones.

The window.  The WINDOW.

The cheerful, giant gingerbread man who lives in this shambles of a house.
When I assembled our materials, what kept me going was the thought that it couldn’t possibly be worse than last year.  And happily, it wasn’t.  I followed some advice I received after last year’s disaster: a) Buy a kit that has pre-made icing, and b) buy a kit that has the house already assembled.  Let me tell you, for all who may wish to make a gingerbread house but are as poorly equipped to do so as I am, those two pieces of advice are worth their weight in gold.
I guess advice doesn’t actually weigh anything.  Let me rephrase: those two pieces of advice ARE gold.

The kids happily decorated and ate the stale, crunchy candy.  Things stuck to the house and it looks kind of cute, I think.

It looked cute enough that I set it on the coffee table as a decoration.  I was supremely proud – the house was not hideous, and I had just created Christmas cheer!  Just like that!  The coffee table looked festive and decorated.  But I forgot about the wild card that is my dog.

Barkley’s a really good dog, despite his penchant for consuming his own frozen fecal material and vomit.  He likes to be obedient, and he doesn’t like to be scolded.  I placed the gingerbread house on the low coffee table, looked at him sternly, and said the magic words, the words that work, as will be seen, most, but not all of the time “Leave it”.

Gingerbread to a dog seems to be like crack cocaine to a junkie.  He licked it.  Now, normally that wouldn’t bother me because it is not like we are actually going to eat the gingerbread house given that it could be years old and who would know?  It’s rock hard and pretty disgusting.  I bake gingerbread and it’s delicious, but that stuff that comes in a box from who-knows-where?  No one is eating that.  Unfortunately, once Barkley got a lick of that gingerbread house he needed more.  Just one more hit, man.  Just one.  Then he transformed into a dog who was actually on crack cocaine.  I think it was the coloured sugar pathway I had creatively added to the cardboard.  He started bounding around the living room, wagging his tail frantically and nudging each person with his nose before moving on and nudging everyone all over again. 

I thought maybe I should take him for a walk, which ended up to be the most insane walk of all, with him pulling on his leash and practically pulling me off my feet.  He sniffed the ground in a crazy, uneven fashion which made me worry that I had actually ruined my dog.  As soon as we got home he bowled me over running inside straight to the coffee table where he stood there looking completely bereft as my husband had moved the gingerbread house to the higher end table.  Then he sadly curled up on his bed and passed out.

I’m happy to report he is back to normal now.

Sure, the house looks good.  But look at our attempt at a gingerbread tree. 

Baby It’s Cold Outside, aka The Holiday Date-Rape Song

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I was sick this week with a weird little illness that manifested itself as a sore throat, tight chest, and overwhelming exhaustion.  Today is the first day I haven’t felt as though if I closed my eyes for more than a blink, I would succumb to narcoleptic urges.  Unfortunately I woke up with no voice – NO VOICE; how to communicate with children? – but it has started to come back now so I can issue commands without the children ignoring me unconsciously (as opposed to the conscious ignoring) or having them answer “What?  WHAT?  I can’t hear you!”
The boys have been in swimming lessons with their school all week, and this always seems perverse to me: swimming in the frigid city-run pools, then walking back to the school in sub-zero temperatures.  The boys seem to be completely depleted by these lessons, or else they have what I have, because this whole week they have become progressively more and more tired.  At lunchtime yesterday, Mark started asking if he had to go back to school in the afternoon; he was soooo tired.  Normally I would have just kept him home, as it was very cold out and the thought of getting everyone dressed and out the door, again, was just too tiring.  After all, how much actual schooling gets done on a Friday afternoon (which is only 80 minutes long) one week before winter break?  This is where homeschoolers have the win.  THE WIN.  However, both his snowpants and backpack were still at school, the boys had haircuts after school, then we had to pick the dog up from the groomers…and I convinced Mark to “just keep going” and promised that after all of that we would just curl up on the couch and watch The Charlie Brown Christmas.  As it turns out, Mark’s class just went to his Grade Five “Buddy” class – the school pairs up older kids with younger ones in a buddy system – and watched Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.  Clearly a LOT of schooling goes on a Friday afternoon one week before winter break.  While Mark was learning about reindeer and their exclusionary tactics, I set Jake up with Starfall on my laptop and proceeded to make all the beds with flannel sheets fresh from the dryer.  Is that a good idea when one is exhausted?  No, it is not.  It took every ounce of willpower not to crawl between those sheets, those cozy, fuzzy, warm-from-the-dryer sheets.
I’m happy to have some energy back today. 
I have great holiday mojo, holiday chores do not get me down, with one exception: gift wrapping.  I decided that I must wrap gifts today, and THREE HOURS later, I finished.  I considered throwing in the proverbial towel and forcing my husband to do it, but he was busy repainting our bedroom, so I kind of felt like I should be doing something productive.  So I wrapped gifts for three hours.  The issue isn’t the number of gifts I have to wrap, it is that I am completely incompetent with gift wrap.  It looks like a three-year-old wrapped my gifts and I don’t even have a three-year-old in the house.  In fact, the two gifts that Jake helped me wrap look significantly better than anything I did on my own.  I don’t know what my problem is.  I always have way too much paper, or not enough, and my hair evidently falls out from the strain because strands of it are always stuck in the tape, or the tape gets stuck on my nails and takes off my nail polish, and then the ribbon.  My word, the ribbon.  How does one make a bow that doesn’t look like something my dog chewed on or, alternately, some kind of poky, pointy, Sputnik-like object that one stuck on an oblong, weirdly shaped, strange cornered parcel?  WHAT IS THE SECRET TO TYING A PRETTY BOW???  By the time I was nearing the end of the gifts, I was pretty much like “FUCK THIS.  NO MORE BOWS.  I HATE ALL OF YOU.  NO BOWS FOR ANYONE.”
So maybe not the Christmas spirit.  I really need my voice to come back full force so I can start with my White Christmas rendition, or Mele Kalikimaka, or even Baby It’s Cold Outside (or as I like to call it, the Holiday Date-Rape Song!).  After all, the best way to spread Christmas cheer is by singing loud for all to hear!  And maybe having a glass of wine.  That should bolster my spirits.

The Elderly and the Fireplace Channel

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So no one died or was dismembered from the swim lessons yesterday, happily enough.  They froze, because our lovely city seems to be practicing the utmost frugality when it comes to heating municipal swimming pools, and also it is December, but they are still in one piece.  So that’s a win.

To warm ourselves up, apparently, we have been watching the holiday fireplace channel.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s not the channel that plays festive music; it is JUST a fireplace, making crackling fire noises.  It’s actually quite relaxing, or would be if the boys didn’t go insane whenever the guy’s arm appears to poke the fire or add another log.  “HE’S POKING THE FIRE!  THERE’S THE NEW LOG!  AAAAHHHHHHH!”  They also like to wonder aloud what would happen if he poked the fire with his bare hands?  Or wouldn’t it be neat if his sleeve caught on fire?  Ah, the warmth and love of the holidays. 

Speaking of festive music, I cannot help myself – I always sing along.  Even, evidently, while shopping at Superstore, like I did today, realizing only when a woman smiled at me that I was singing audibly.  The question arises: what am I going to be like when I am old and crazy?  I read an article in this month’s O magazine that was truly disturbing.  I always thought of my eventual foray into the home for the elderly with fondness: I would be surrounded by other women wearing support hose and feathery lipstick, I would eat lots of soft foods, I would sexually harass the male orderlies.  Maybe I would even learn how to knit or play shuffleboard.  Who knows?  The world will be my aged oyster.  However, according to this article, the foray into the home is riddled with high-school-like hierarchies, depending on one’s level of mobility and ability to match one’s socks with one’s cardigan.  I read that article and felt strangely out of sorts.  Could it be that senior’s residences are not all they are cracked up to be?  Will I really be unable to choose what table to eat my 4:30 dinner at if I have a walker?  Disturbing on many levels.

And what, you may ask, was I doing at Superstore on this fine day?  Shopping for the holiday necessities, of course: booze and cheese.  So I’m all ready for the holidays; if only I hadn’t mentioned to some girlfriends yesterday that we hadn’t been sick for a while…because today it seems I have a sore throat and the tendency to snap at minor issues like my children saying “Mom!  Mom!  Mom!  Mom!” followed with “Um, I forget”.  But I’m sure it’s nothing a little booze and cheese can’t solve!  And maybe an early bedtime.  Good night!

Fake – and Fabulous

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I am sitting right now, seething with anxiety, because my children are both at swimming lessons with their school.  Some of you will know why I am extra anxious this time around, in addition to my usual anxiousness with the kids swimming, and signing those release forms with the school that states that the possibility of injury, dismemberment, and DEATH are all lurking around the corner as the children walk the half block to the swimming pool, not to mention all the dangers in the actual facility.  Some of you might be saying, hey, you’re a stay at home mom and you’re blogging while your children are swimming?  Maybe you should be volunteering to help!  Let me tell you, people, my volunteering at a public swimming pool would not be a good idea, given my penchant for anxiety attacks in public change rooms.  I don’t know when this started; I certainly wasn’t always such a nut, but let’s just leave it at “I don’t volunteer to help at swimming lessons.”
Anyway. 
We’ve had our Christmas tree up for two weeks now.  I live in a fairly small bungalow, and every year the putting up of the tree has required us to move every article of furniture around, including moving some to the basement, just to make space for our five-foot tree.  But this year, we purchased a new tree – a “slim build” – and it is all kinds of awesome.  Check it out!

You can see that it is still kind of wedged between the table and the armchair, but hey.  We didn’t actually have to rearrange the entire floor plan for it – more like just move the table a foot or so.  Decorating the tree is one of my favourite things to do.  The kids pretty much just spin out of control with excitement, we have to lock the dog into his crate because he goes nuts trying to figure out what is with this giant tree and why are the kids so excited, and my husband actually puts the tree together while I sing “Santa Baby” in a slutty kind of voice.  Good times.  We have an artificial tree despite the environmental horror, because three out of four people in this house have allergies and we do like to keep the mucus membranes happy.  I think it looks pretty fabulous, actually.  Here is my favourite part of the tree:

Jake put four of those candy cane ornaments on the same branch, and refused to move any of them because “They are a family!”.  Love that kid. 

This weekend we also lit our strange assortment of outdoor decorations – a moose, a hippo, two penguins, and a miniature tree.  My husband had to do some extensive feats of electrical engineering just to get everything lit, the timer to go on, etc.  It reminded me of one of my very favourite Christmas movies of all time – Christmas Vacation.  “The little lights are not twinkling.” 
All right.  I am still slightly anxious about the swimming but I’m feeling better, so thank you for listening.  I will end with another great line from that movie – a friend reminded me of it – “Holy shit.  Where’s the Tylenol?”

Wasn’t that a party?

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The party was great!  I had full intentions of posting pictures of my outfit, but we had a new sitter and in my anxious getting-ready-to-leave-and-talking-far-too-much (“and the cell number is here, and here, and here”) I forgot to take a picture before we left, and then when we got home I was feeling slightly worse for the wear.  There was great food, lots of wine, and the deejay even played Billie Jean, despite which I maintained my dignity by NOT doing the moonwalk.  In fact I didn’t dance at all, instead partaking in many entertaining conversations, not the least of which was with one woman who regaled me with her stories of visiting “The Happiest Place on Earth” and crying a lot.  I felt an immediate kinship with her.  I introduced myself to one sweet young girl who floored me by saying she recognized me from this blog.  That was both startling and gratifying, and if you are reading this, hi!  Thanks for reading!  Also highly gratifying was the conversation that took place with another lovely young girl in the ladies’ room, who informed me that she loved my hair and wished hers was like it.  Such a thing has never been said to me before, given that my hair is one of my least favourite attributes and the cause of much emotional suffering throughout my life.  In fact, I can summarise an entire decade of bad hair in two words: home perms.  I would do a photo montage of that time if it wasn’t so incredibly depressing.  So I was sufficiently warmed by the kindness of people, and I stayed up until all hours – i.e., midnight – resulting in my feeling quite tired and slightly delicate today.
In other words, I was not in the least prepared for the scenario in which I drove Jake to a birthday party, taking place at a church gymnasium, and realized when we arrived at the church, ten minutes late, that we were actually at the wrong church.  Situation was revolutionized by my actual utilization of my Garmin.  My husband bought me that Garmin two years ago in response to my constant getting lost and hysterical, but I have never independently operated it.  I did manage to use it today, and although I was a bit panicky (“Why is it saying to put in an address for British Columbia?  We’re not IN British Columbia.”) I did end up at the correct church.  However, once we were there and I was oriented, I realized that the Garmin had taken the most circuitous route possible.  Nonetheless, I did get there so Garmin for the win! 
While Jake was spending, apparently, two solid hours in a bouncy castle, I browsed through Bed, Bath and Beyond.  I had never been there before but I always kind of wanted to, all because of the scene in Old School where Frank the Tank describes his potential “pretty nice little Saturday”.  I ended up buying a new shower curtain, to replace our ten year old one, and felt like I just renovated our entire bathroom.  It’s funny how something small can do that.  It’s also funny how my husband’s and my own tastes are incredibly divergent on the subject of shower curtains.  I cannot wait for the conversation when I go to replace our aged comforter!  But that is a story for another day.