Happy Holidays, Internets!

So we sort of neglected to do holidays cards this year. Maybe we were intimidated at the prospect of trying to top the picture we used on last year's cards. Or maybe we're just lazy.

Anyway, season's greetings y'all. Hope they treat you right.

I Build and I Sing and I Sing and I Build

My mom's Christmas present to the boys was a big backyard playset, complete with swings, a slide, a treehouse, the whole works. It arrived at my house in three enormous cardboard boxes, every piece separate, not a lick of it pre-assembled or labeled. I've now devoted approximately 2.5 days to its construction, and I estimate I've got at least another day left before it's done.

Most of today was spent working on the enclosed cabin part of the structure. This is the place where I predict the boys will go when they're mad at us. I expect those walls will be witness to many a hatched plan, conspired conspiracy, and gathering of small people. I wonder how long until one of them decides to snag some extra fabric from Mom's sewing room to hang in the windows so's nobody can see what they're up to.

Anyway, while I was sitting four feet off the ground in the cabin, Henry kept looking up at me and asking if he could climb up with me. I kept telling him that he couldn't come up until I had it all built, but then it occurred to me, aw crap, once thing thing is all put together, he'll be climbing all over it. I wonder how long before the first good fall? I gotta shred me up some tires before somebody breaks an arm.

So while I was screwing in the billion-odd wooden slats that make up the house's walls, I had rap lyrics running through my head, one of which was Talib Kweli saying "It's a small wonder like Vicki/that I'm picky..." and I don't remember what comes after that, but I got stuck on that part because my internal singer--you know, the little person inside your head that sings when you don't feel like singing out for all the world to hear? Well that little guy started singing the theme song to "Small Wonder." And before I knew it, he'd sung the whole goddamn song. I let my drill hang at my side and took my finger off of its trigger while I let that little fact sink in: Holmes, you know the entire theme song to "Small Wonder." Sometimes when I remember old shows like that, I'm not certain if I should trust my memory. Like "Parker Lewis Can't Lose" or "Square Pegs." I ask myself, were these shows really on T.V. at one point? Or do I just have some false memory of them? Could it be that perhaps I was the only person in the world watching them?

I was pondering all of this later on while I was rocking Simon to sleep. It occurred to me that I could've tweeted about knowing the "Small Wonder" theme, but the moment was passed. Ah well, I can live with a bit of tweetgret.

Tweetgret: noun. The feeling of regret that one experiences upon realizing that an opportunity to tweet has passed.

I shouldn't have been surprised that I knew that song. My brain is a magnet for lyrics that I don't want to remember. Like the other day, I was being silly and I started singing the chorus to a Tori Amos song, thinking that I would only sing a line or two, but then I realized that I knew the whole fucking thing. And yes, I sang it out. You might say I belted it. I'm not what you'd call a Tori Amos fan, more like an antifan. But somehow, every woman that I've ever dated, married, or otherwise had cause to exchange fluids with over the course of a significant span of time has been a Tori devotee. Which is why if you put on Little Earthquakes, I could probably sing along with 80 - 99% of it. And I'd do it too, just out of spite. Spite for who or what? Can't say, my friends. I just can't say.

Maybe I'll post about the holidays at some point.

Sometimes things work out exactly as you expect them to

Case in point:

This is the first Christmas where Henry has been the one to bring up Santa Claus. For the last couple of weeks, he's been talking about wanting to go see Santa, a feat we've never attempted before because, well, see above. Still, he insisted he wanted to go so that he could tell Santa what he wants for Christmas. And do you know what he wants, what he has said over and over and over he wants to find when he wakes up Christmas morning? No, not a Red Ryder beebee gun. No, even better: cookies! Like, the kind you eat! Score, yo. I'll swing by the grocery store on the way home. It'll be the best Christmas ever.

As you can see, Simon is, as usual, unfazed.

Necessity is the mother of some such or something like that

Sunday night after the boys were asleep, The Ash and I busted open the boxes and decorated the tree that had stood in the corner all afternoon, naked, patiently waiting for our attention. Every year, somewhere during the tree decorating process, I find myself stepping back for a moment and considering the strangeness of this tradition. What might a visitor from another planet think of this practice of bringing a tree into one’s dwelling and adorning it with all manner of lights, ribbons, and bright shiny objects of various shapes? Not to mention the rest of the traditional Christmas decor. You know which one always cracks me up? The nativity scene with the kneeling Santa Claus. That’s just the most Christmasarrific mashup ever. Maybe at Easter, there should be a giant bunny dressed as a Roman soldier. Or maybe a wabbit pushing a stone away from a cave. I’d put that on my lawn.

Monday morning, the boys discovered the tree. Our nearly one-year-old is plenty mobile and plenty curious, so we left the bottom foot or so of the tree undecorated. It’s like the tree is dressed in a short skirt. Just showing off a little leg, ya know? Hey, a tree’s got needs. So I watched as the nearly one-year-old, my little New Year’s Eve baby, eyed the lowest hanging ornament, a shiny silver bell with colorful stripes all the way around. From his sitting up position it was well out of his reach. He raised his hand towards it and attempted to stand. His legs wobbled for a moment, then he thunked back down on his little baby butt. He tried again, same results. I watched him try this maneuver again and again, never taking his eyes off of that bell. Finally, he stood up and held his stance firmly, long enough to reach out and pluck the ornament off of the tree. I have you now, pretty shing thing. With it safely in his grasp, he sat back down and inspected his find more closely. The bell remained stoic.

I suppose if all the good tasting fruit grew out of the ground, humankind would still be crawling.

December Moon

I've been enjoying looking up at the moon through the December night air this past week. I got a wild hair on Christmas Eve Eve night and decided to see if there were any nifty settings on my camera that I hadn't yet put to use that would capture a bit of its grandeur, but this doesn't even come close to doing it any justice. Ah well.

Both the year and this pregnancy are coming to a close, though only one of them has an ending date that is for certain. The little fella is 8 days late as of today. Were this a package, I'd be online tracking it, but no such service exists as of yet. Stupid technology. The little guy may not be born yet, but he's already received his first Christmas gifts. Hope he's not mad that we opened them for him.

Henry spent all day Christmas surrounded by family. Not only did he have some new stuff to play with, he also had plenty of people around that he could grab to make play with him. In short, the kid was in his own version of toddler heaven.

Hope everybody had a great holiday. I'll let y'all know when this baby decides to make an appearance. Until then, enjoy the rest of the year.

Gee, do they still make wooden Christmas trees?

Last Sunday, Ash informed me that she had just an inkling of a feeling that the baby was going to come that day or the next. The feeling turned out to be nothing, perhaps just a bit of undigested beef or a blot of mustard. Whatever it was, it served the most welcome purpose of nudging us into action to make a push towards getting our recently moved-into house look like a place where civilized members of the human race reside. Of course, we couldn't bring a December baby home to a bare Christmas tree, so part of the day's labor included decorating the tree while our VCR performed its single solitary annual duty of playing my VHS copy of A Charlie Brown Christmas. I decorated while Henry tried to stick himself with hooks. Afterwards, we managed to unpack a fair amount of boxes and put some stuff away. The place is downright cozy and livable, not to mention Christmasy.

I've gone to work every day this week, always halfway expecting to get the call. I forgot my cell phone one day, so I was just absolutely certain that labor would begin while I was in a meeting. It probably goes without saying that my brain is halfway checked out of the workplace. I'm still getting things done and checking things off of my list (hi boss!). I've even managed to wrap a few things up before I take the rest of my vacation days that I have saved up for the year (I refuse to use the term "paternity leave" since that would imply that I'm talking about some special kind of leave that is set aside just for new parents and which is actually possible for people who rely on a paycheck). But in reality, my brain is mostly elsewhere. This isn't so unusual in the holiday season, but with a new biscuit on the way, it's amazing I remember my work PC's password.

It seems that when I'm in this "checked out" mode, my randomness factor increases a bit. Case in point: I was sitting in a meeting room waiting for, what else, a meeting to start. And out of nowhere, I just started singing. Exactly what did I sing, you ask? Well, the purpose of the meeting was to review software requirements documentation written by one of my coworkers whose name is Julius, so naturally I sang:

Half of what we'll say in this meeting will be meaningless
But we'll say it just to make your documentation better Juuuuuuuliuuuus.

This, of course, was met with stone silence. As it should have been.

Tonight, we spent another evening at Ashley's folks' place. With family coming in for the holidays and rallying around their dying relative, their place has been pretty packed lately. Henry loves all of this. He, for one, would be totally down with everybody going over to Grandma's house every single night of the week. One of the many beautiful things about this little boy is just how much he loves His People. That includes his family, his friends, his parents' friends, just everybody who's around. He just talks about all of them all of the time. If he knows you, he loves you. It gives me some hope for the future, that the feelings he'll have for the baby that will be his little brother will be warm ones.

It's coming back around again

So it would seem that Mr. Boy is clued in to the fact that there is this thing called Christmas coming down the pipe pretty soon. About a week ago, I started asking him if he wanted to get a Christmas tree, and his response has evolved from a suspicious nod of the head to an excitedly whispered "yeah!", delivered with that tone that's reserved for children who are on to something magical and big that promises to blow open the boundaries of their reality.

So tonight we went down to the tree lot and picked out a suitable specimen. "Pick me" said this one tree. "I'll hold your lights and your little baubles with dignity." And so we did. As I tied the tree to the top of our wagon, I felt that familiar twinge of anxiety I get every time I tie something down for transport. See, I'm only good at like 2.5 things, and knot-tying accounts for 1.2 of those, so if my knots fail, if word gets out that an Eagle Scout couldn't even secure a Christmas tree to the top of a car, well the ramifications make my stomach go gurgle. But I got the tree home, in spite of the fact that we had to go to four different stores before we found one that had any tree stands in stock.

With the tree safely secured, it was dinner time at Ashley's folks' place. We've spent a fair amount of time over there lately since The Ash's uncle has moved in with them to spend his last days. I don't know her Uncle Richie all that well since he's been a recluse for most of the years of our relationship, but from what little time I've spent around him, I know that I like him and wish I knew him better. Over these last few days, even with the pain of terminal cancer, he's shown the intellect and spark of a man who is still, in some ways, very much alive.

The after-dinner portion of this evening was somewhat surreal. I played sudoku, Henry played with his grandma and great aunt, and Richie placed his signature in all the necessary places in the document containing his last will and testament. The Ash, her sister, and her dad also affixed their signatures as witnesses. I suppose it should have been a morbid moment, and perhaps from a different perspective it could be viewed as such, but it didn't feel quite so to me. More like family doing what family has to do when presented with painful reality. It was very quiet except for Henry, who wasn't falling for that "let's play 'The Quiet Game'" nonsense.

I was thinking about Richie as I drove home from the semester's very last class period today. It hasn't escaped anyone's notice that this family is about to experience both a death and a birth any day now. And even though this is a Texas December and I was wearing shorts today, it's still the end of the year, and there's still that sense of the world settling down and waiting to be reborn into a new year. And perhaps it was because I was coming home from theology class and my mind was especially open to the beauty of the stories and metaphors that we all live and walk through every day, and perhaps, yes, maybe there was a song playing on the radio that I like in spite of myself, but I got hit with one of those blessed moments of beautiful Melancholy where everything in the world feels intensely connected. Yeah, there may have been a few tears.

Our tree is now standing in the corner of the living room of our little house, waiting for tomorrow when it will be adorned with lights, decor, perhaps the odd action figure. It will be the first Christmas that my eldest son starts to "get it", and my youngest's very first Christmas at all. Maybe we can make ourselves a few memories for keeps.