Holidays

My kids like April Fools’ Day. It’s a festive time when they spend every waking minute lying their faces off and then saying, “Just KIDDING! April Fools!” Laylee said the best trick she played all day was to tell one friend that our grandma had died. I told Laylee that might be a mean trick and she said, “No it wasn’t. She wasn’t sad. She doesn’t even know our grandma.”

Magoo came up with the best trick ever. He used it all day long and I fell for it every single time. Here’s how it went:

Magoo: Hey Mom?
Me: Yeah Buddy?
Magoo: Just KIDDING! I didn’t really need anything. April FOOLS!

10 minutes later:

Magoo: Mom! Hey Mom? Excuse me Mom!
Me: What do you need?
Magoo: NU-THING! April Fools!

20 minutes after that:

Magoo: Mom? You know what?
Me: I don’t know. What?
Me: April FOOLS! I wasn’t gonna say anything. HA HA HA HA!

He spent all day changing it up, finding new ways to trick me with the same joke, which was basically my name. It was sweet. I mostly laughed but on April 2nd I stomped all over his fun. “It’s not April Fools’ Day today. That doesn’t work anymore.”

I’m not sure what “That doesn’t work anymore” really means. I think it means something like, “For real. If you keep doing that I will go mental and then you won’t be allowed to eat sugar ever ever again and I’m pretty sure that wasn’t your plan so it probably won’t work for you to keep saying it.”

Dan and I wrap several presents for each other every Christmas. They’re mostly small things, DVDs, gift cards, a vegetable brush shaped like a tuna. On each present we place a stick-on gift tag and address it with a different set of cutesie nicknames.

To: Papa-sicle, Love: Mama-Pop
To: Computer Geek, from: Hot Blogger
To: Sugar Face, from: Googly Bear
To: Daddy Dan, Love: Mama Kate

These are meant to be funny, sometimes cute and always a teensy bit embarrassing. We stole the tradition from my parents who also frequently kissed while exchanging presents. I know. Gross. But here I am a parent myself and I’m doing the exact same thing.

Laylee disapproves of this tradition, not because of the gross shmooptitude or even the fact that it’s sometimes hard to figure out which present goes to whom at a family gathering. Her all-seeing eye of disapproval is turned towards us because we use sticky labels instead of making elaborate hand-written cards for each present.

She caught me doing this the week before Christmas and asked, “Aren’t you going to make a card for that present?”

“Nope,” I responded.

She looked disgusted. “Fine,” she said, “I’ll do it.”

I was confused. Afterall, it was my present to Dan. She took the name off the sticky label, “Daddy Dan” and incorporated it into this passive aggressive Christmas card.

The envelope:

“Because Mom didn’t want to.”

And then inside the card:

She then stuck this card onto my present for Dan over top of my sticky label. She made no secret that the actual present was from me but that due to my extreme laziness, she had needed to step in and take the gift to the next level.

I applaud her use of parentheses at the bottom of the card where she reiterates my lack of card-making desire. This mom person must be quite the shmuck, I’ll tell you what.

Boys and girls are different. It’s true. My kids continually remind me of this. Christmas was no exception. Dan took them shopping and let them each pick a card for me.

This is what Laylee came up with:

She chose, sweet, traditional and religious. On the inside she wrote a tender message that makes me want to actually become “the sweetist mom around and spred love throu the town.”

Magoo, on the other hand, decided to go with blood-drenched crazy reindeer.

Dan read him the words on the card and asked, “Are you sure?” and Magoo answered emphatically, “Yep. I’m sure.”

I think they’re both perfect.

On the way home from preschool, I came up with 2 haikus.

Inflatable guys
You lie flat all day on lawns
It is pathetic

All day you are flat
Like the melted Wicked Witch
You scare the children

Sometimes you have to face facts. Sometimes your fake Christmas tree is just dead. You should not try to resuscitate it. You should not try to meld the stand back together with Super Glue. You may end up gluing your fingers to the tree and then to each other while the tree lies lifelessly in a pool of its own ornaments on the baby’s tummy-time blanket.

A $20 fake Christmas tree from Rite-Aid does not owe you anything. After 5 years of service, sometimes it’s best just to say, “Thanks. It’s been a good ride. Ho Ho Ho Croak.”

Security.

Yesterday we decorated for Christmas. It’s not officially December but the last of the mashed potatoes and stuffing were gone and it seemed like something I could do with a clean conscience and only moderate disapproval from my mother. She’s a December 1st hardliner. I prefer to sort of go with the flow, like the one time in college when my roommates and I decorated for Christmas on Halloween night. When we figured we wouldn’t get any more tick-or-treaters, the pumpkins came down and the Christmas palace went up. It was a good couple of months. I think Delilah would approve.

When we got through all the boxes of green and red green-and-red-ness this year, I realized that the one thing missing was my favorite decoration in all the world, a garland of tiny mittens I’d made shortly after Dan and I were married. I copied the design from a Pottery Barn catalog, sewing the tiny mittens out of fleece one by one and then loosely embroidering Christmas designs on them, snowflakes, Christmas trees and such. I love them and they are gone. I frantically searched every box, only to realize that I’d gotten rid of a box of unwanted decorations the week before.

D.I. (sort of a Mormon Goodwill) keeps a trailer outside our church building for donations to be dropped into. Last week I took a load of several boxes, including the old Christmas decorations, and dropped them off in the back of the nearly empty trailer. So at church today, I opened the trailer to look for my long lost teeny weeny mitten garland, only to find the thing brimming full of junk. The trailer was about 20 feet long and completely filled with bicycles, dishes, electronics, clothes, beds, board games, and actual garbage.

Oh ye who put the pee-stained 80-year-old pillow in the trailer – REALLY?! That’s a “donation”? I’d like to donate something to you sometime.

But I really wanted the mittens so as my family headed into church, I pulled off my high-heeled boots and began making my way cat-like through the rubble of useless goods, over desks and through piles of suspect garbage bags. After sifting through boxes for 15 minutes, I gave up and made my way back out to the parking lot, defeated and drowning my sorrows in hand sanitizer.

During our church meeting Laylee sat quietly drawing pictures of each of us, Wanda with her little lips, huge cheeks and Mohawk, Dan with his pointy pin-head and glasses, Magoo with his fat head and me with my gorgeous eye-lashes, ravishing smile and meticulously placed zits. She was all about accuracy, studying my face carefully and then adding dots one at a time in the correct constellations on my forehead, nose and cheeks.

When I told the teenage girls I teach about my lost garland, one of them sincerely offered to go back into the D.I. trailer abyss and dig for me. I thanked her but told her it was hopeless. When Dan offered after church, I caved and accepted his willingness to gallantly risk his life for my handy-crafts. It takes a real man to dig through other people’s garbage in a church parking lot, while his friends and neighbors walk by giving him odd looks. I’m sure more than a few of them were wondering whether things had gotten so bad that we had stooped to stealing from the donations trailer. I stood guard while he navigated his way through the junk. No dice. I mean, there probably were dice in there somewhere, but no tiny mittens.

All I can do now is hope we find them somewhere in our garage, a location that somewhat resembles the D.I. trailer at this point, except all the donations have come directly from me and my rabble.