A season of miracles

Being that it was Christmastime, and Christmas being the time of miracles, I shouldn't have been so shocked that Daniel and Eve stopped sucking their thumbs overnight. I'm sure if it were done any other time of the year it wouldn't have been as miraculous, unless it were Easter, which is when I heard something big happened once.

All I had to say was, "Sucking your thumb will make your big people teeth grow in funny. Not funny like haha but funny like weird-looking." And then I had to tell Daniel that you don't want to purposely look weird, no matter how funny it sounded. And that was it. They stopped. Had I known it would be that easy, I would have tried to make them stop a long time ago. Maybe God thought we had been through enough trials between the cancer and the mice and decided to give us a Get Out of Thumb Sucking Free Pass. Thanks, big G!

I took Eve and her unwrinkly thumb to Natalie's winter program at school. We stood in the back, where all moms with kids from Where the Wild Things Are choose to stand with their wild things. This way there is a buffer between wild thing and the stage and your chance of catching them is significantly increased, should they escape.

The wild thing didn't storm the stage. As I said, it is the time of miracles. But as Christmastime/Wintertime/Holidaytime/Traditiontime would have it, we would be required to be at the school two more times that week to bear witness to things that would be sent home or things that were sent from home.

There was a Winter time party that Natalie requested I attend so I could stand there with wild thing and watch them eat cookies.

I really wanted a cookie, but no one would share. Plus, I saw a kid touch most of them as he manhandled the tray, and we all know kids have cooties. Especially boy kids.

I brought wild thing with me to watch Natalie's inauguration into student council. Eve was excited...about the Mentos she found in my purse. Luckily, these distracted her before she could storm the stage.

It is stressful to bring kids who don't belong in school to school. It makes me want to start sucking my thumb.

It's almost as stressful as bringing your son to watch his sister do the Nutcracker in her ballet class because he wants to get up and do the Nutcracker in his sister's ballet class. And while it is perfectly acceptable to scream the words to Margaritaville during a Jimmy Buffett concert, I have yet to attend a ballet where excited audience members pirouette in the aisles.

Eve was pretty serious about doing exactly what she should be doing during her Nutcracker performance. She's out to kill the Mouse King, and I'm wondering if she'd also be open to killing the ones who eat the peanut butter off the traps in our garage.

Another miracle of miracles, I did my dishes and had a clean sink and stove for our Christmas Cookie Swap party. Normally there are pots and pans covered in cream cheese and pinches of love, but not this year. This year we stop sucking the thumb. This year we do our dishes.

This year we can eat twenty different appetizers covered in full-fat cream cheese because we just hiked 28.3 miles, and that's 113.2 miles between the four of us, which is like diving into a swimming pool of any full-fat dairy goodness that pleases you.

I swear, I'll stop trying to eat up for that hike after the New Year.

Miracle of miracles: Jo Garvin, self-proclaimed mistress of undomesticity, won the prize for best cookie. Her brownies won the cookie contest.

But now all I want to do is figure out how to use Photoshop so I can add an apron, a spatula, and a dirty martini to that picture.

I would probably lose a lot of time in the day if I actually knew how to use Photoshop. I mean, I've already dedicated 20% of waking hours to Facebook and Pinterest and nachos. Not sure if I could squeeze anything else in before my kids stop getting bathed regularly.

Each year for Christmas, we let Santa bring just about all of the presents. What Mommy and Daddy give to the kids is a day with Mommy and Daddy without their siblings. We know, we're awesome. I mean, if we weren't awesome, that would be a pretty lame gift. The gift of us!

Natalie's gift came a couple of days before Christmas, because the Nutcracker didn't have any day-after-Christmas shows this year. Like those ballerinas are too cool for dancing at a Monday matinee or something.

You know who is too cool? Yo momma and daddy. Otherwise we wouldn't have gifted ourselves.

But what was really on the kids' lists this year?

Dear Santa Claws,

I wish for some underwear and some make-up and some wigs and a joke book and a puppy and jewelry and some maps. Love, Natalie

Just kidding, Santa. I saw some commercials and would like to add Zoobles and Bendaroos and a bag of lots of lipstick to my list. And don't forget that puppy I tried to squeeze in there.

[Dear Santa,]
[I would like] white paper, Legos, haunted teeth, stickers, Star Wars movies, markers, crayons, [and a] toy gun. [Sincerely, Daniel.]

So on Christmas Eve night, stockings were hung with haphazard care in hopes that St. Nicholas would leave nutcracker-shaped Snickers in there.

And Eve carefully selected which cookies they would leave out for Santa by making sure she touched every square inch of every selected cookie after having her hand in her mouth.

Because she was checking to see if she had any loose teeth. In case the tooth fairy would come to the house that particular night, as if she wasn't exhausted from the day she had, starting out at her local Cash 4 Gold trying to unload some gold teeth so she could have the funds to create the perfect Christmas for her little fairy family. No, Eve, she's not coming and Santa does not want your germs all over his cookies.

Daniel was insistent that we make reindeer food. Reindeer food in our house always consists of whatever cereal we have that is about to go stale. This year, Rudolph gets an insane amount of fiber. Like, the amount of fiber that anyone over the age of fifty gets excited about.

Natalie was excited.

Eve was excited.

And I'm sure Daniel was excited, too, but he was too busy leaving out a bucket of water for the reindeer to be photographed being excited.

There was plenty to open even before Santa got here. I mean, imagine their faces when the kids open up their gift of US! And all these presents my parents brought down.

But when Santa comes, he still always leaves his presents by the [gas] fireplace. And he politely eats the germy cookies because that's what Jesus would do. Or, he'd feed 5000 people with them. Either way, he'd be very polite about it.

That's WJWD.