One of the cutest skills the boychild has mastered to date is applause. He picked that up last weekend, I think, and he takes every opportunity to use it. He applauds himself very often, always with a sweet “aaaaaayyyyyyyyy,” but lately he’s prefacing every word with a “d,” so more often than not, it’s “Daaaayyyyyyy!”*

This morning, when I was dozing in the comfy cocoon that is the boychild’s bed and the boychild was in his crib, he woke and demanded to move from crib to bed, so I snuggled next to him and prepared to nurse and as I unsnapped a hooky thing on my tank, the boy sat up, watched in wide-awake fascination and applauded the breast that appeared in front of him.

I felt very appreciated. I’m pretty sure my bosom has never gotten applause before, complete with a quiet “Daaaayyyyy!”

* The Husband will tell you that the Crabcake uses a “d” in front of everything because he likes DaDa best, and I just smile, smile, smile. Last night, tho, a sniffly boychild wanted DaDa and not me and when I was standing with him next to the crib in his darkish room, swaying back and forth and alternating between rubbing and patting his back and rubbing the fuzzy soft hair on his head and saying our SLEEP NOW, PLEASE code words (night-night and shhhhhh, shhhhhhh), he also wanted his crib over me, which was fascinating and delightful and strange all at once. He dove for the crib.

Before I look ahead, let’s glance backwards a moment.

Christmas was lovely. I barely managed to get the Christmas tree hauled into the house in an upright fashion–actually, I didn’t manage it at all, the Husband did–and once we brought it in after 10 days outside, it wasn’t in great shape. It didn’t drop needles. The branches just didn’t fall out nicely. I still couldn’t bear to look at the tree, much less decorate the thing, so as of last Wednesday a.m., it wore only an angel on top that McPantses made in art class at school. The Husband kept the kids at home on 12/21 for half a day because the heat was out at their school and he turned McPantses loose with the boxes of Christmas ornaments. When I came home from work in the middle of the day, the tree was very well decorated from about midway on down.

That’s the kind of Christmas we had this year. Everyone had a lovely time, I think, and now it’s over and I am, to steal someone else’s phrase, all relatived-out for the time being.

And the tree?

Already gone, thank goodness.

We’ll do better next year. Per McPantses: “Mom, can we at least put some lights on it next year?”

On Monday, the stomach flu hit our house and the rest of the week, we’ve been sidelined by colds and creeping eye rot,* which means that our New Year’s plans are scratched, too. I was going to take the kiddos to North Carolina for our friend’s fifth birthday party, but I cannot drag germs across the country, especially to visit a pregnant woman.** I bought a swell bottle of champagne as consolation.

2005 was a wonderful year for us. We welcomed a son and our second and final child, which strengthened our relationship with our daughter, somehow, or maybe it just strengthened us as parents. We evolved, anyway, as a family. We lost the Husband’s grandmother, but before she died, McPantses got to know her as well as she could, and she made memories that I hope will last forever. The boychild started off as a tiny little chicken-legged farty thing and grew into a chunky, blabbling, army-crawling, farty thing and McPantses grew in every way possible. The Husband and I had great work years and started planning in earnest about changes we want to make for ourselves.

Here’s my list for 2006. I wanted achievable goals, so while I’d love to drop 20 lbs and exercise 6 days a week, I’m listing the following instead:

1. Read more and keep a journal about it on my blog. Read aloud to the children, or read to McPantses while the Crabcake gnaws on a book.

2. Grow my brain. I’m going to memorize a poem this year. I planned to memorize a long one over the course of a year, but instead, I’m going to do two shorter ones.

3. Draw more.

4. Either get over my big hurt or begin speaking to someone who will help me learn to cope.

5. Pay off at least one debt.

6. Call the yoga studio and find out if they have anything that fits my schedule.

* In the form of pinkeye and an ulcer on my left eyeball, which means I’ve had to ditch my contacts and wear my spiffy mad scientist glasses. When you’re -9 in both eyes, your lenses either resemble glass from the Hubble space telescope or they’re teeeny tiny. Oooh, the dye the first doctor (the creeping eye rot has required two separate doctor visits) put in my eyeball was flourescent yellow. He used a black light to check for eyeball scratches (I am, if nothing else, scratch-free) and informed me, as I mopped yellow runoff off my cheeks, that if my nose rans later, the snot would probably be the same yellow. I looked forward to yellow snot action but, alas, the snot stayed regularly snotty.

** Please send good thoughts to my pregnant friend. I am over the moon for her and I hope her long-awaited, very much wanted pregnancy sails by with ease and joy. No one should have to suffer to become pregnant and it shouldn’t take years to achieve. God bless her and her family.

As I struggle to finish my Christmas cards this year (they are quickly on their way to becoming New Year’s cards at this point), I take great delight in receiving cards from friends and family. The Husband and I check out all the kids in the photos and talk about how much people have changed over the past year.

Last night, we studied a card from a local family–there’s a picture of the whole ding dang family on the card and it’s a very lovely black and white shot. This family emailed photos from right after their child was born earlier this year and in the hospital shots, the mom had on full makeup and more jewelry than I’d wear to a ball.* It was absolutely hysterical and I’ve never seen anything like it before.

The Husband and I decided that the stupider of our two dogs has a brighter intellect than the photo card family altogether.

The photo card people are really status conscious, in every possible way. She’s difficult to converse with because she always looks around while talking–she’s scanning the room to look for someone better to chat up.

I live in a city, but it’s not huge. Newcomers usually do pretty well here and the big social climbers stand out, as does this girl. I’m not sure if she just has no idea that she’s the subject of much behind-the-scenes nattering or if she knows and just doesn’t give a rip. As the Husband would say, if we’re talking about her, whatever she’s doing works.

Perhaps the photo card family was locked in the Husband’s subconscious when he picked out this book at Barnes & Noble last night. He’s already reading something else, so I started Alain de Botton’s book while avoiding the whole “I’m totally behind and still have over 100 Christmas cards to send out” thing for the evening. Honestly, there’s nothing that motivates me to start something new than the avoidance of finishing something I should.

I’ll let you know how it turns out. It’s a tiny stepping stone in my path towards nonfiction brain expansion.

* Upon reflection, I pretty much wear the same jewelry everywhere, so let me better illustrate my point: she had on more jewelry than McPantses would wear playing dressup, and the kid has a barrel of Mardi Gras beads and other assorted sparkly crapola collected in her magpie’s nest of bright, shiny things.

This morning, it’s not really that I woke up. It’s more like I got punched in the face by daylight.

My stomach is sour. My head aches. I was scrabbling through the bathroom cabinet for Tums before work, but neither the Husband or I could find any. I was craving water and diet coke in the worst way (until I got one).

My eyelids are so puffy that it looks like I sobbed for hours in the night.

I feel bleary-eyed and hazy and I have the beginnings of some sniffly cold thing, so I also feel like I’m hearing the world around me while I swim along underwater.

I printed 450 invitations last night. It takes my inkjet a long freaking time to print 450 invitations, front and back. I also finished cutting our Christmas cards and made a massive amount of grits casserole for my office and the Husband’s office. I don’t think I sat down at all between 10 p.m. and 1 a.m.

I went to bed at 1 a.m., I think–I cannot quite remember because I was falling asleep in my seat, rocking the boychild, when I finally put him down for a moment and got myself in bed.

I got up for a bit at 4 a.m. and started the printer again. Add to that the several times the boy and I went back and forth between the crib and nursing/sleeping/snuggling. I don’t think I slept longer than 45 minutes at any given stretch through the night. At 6:45 a.m., I cracked an eye, against my will, and noticed daylight, which sent me out of bed like a shot–McPantses, our a.m. alarm clock, is at her Atlanta grandparents for a couple of days,* so the Husband, who is normally up and at ‘em at 6 a.m., turned off the alarm clock in his sleep and was sawing logs when I finally woke him.

It is physically painful to be alive right now. The saddest part?

I’m sleep-deprived hungover.

I didn’t have a single drop of alcohol and I feel worse than if I’d had thousands of drops of alcohol.

I hate to feel like complete roadkill with no fun to show for it.

* McPantses is being feted for a few days during her grandparents’ last Christmas in Atlanta. She’s seeing The Nutcracker at the Fox. She drove through Callaway Gardens last night and saw the Christmas lights deal. She’s got a gingerbread house to make. They’re going to some massive corporate kiddie Christmas party Friday morning. The kid is partying like a tiny rock star, I tell you. I bet her grandmother, who told me yesterday as they pulled out of the driveway, that she was planning to sleep with McP last night, is feeling a bit sleep-hungover herself this a.m.

I am inviting people to list books that I should read next year–please tell me why you think I should read them, too.

I am going to ask three people to help me make a list of 12 non-fiction books so that I can read one a month for the next year, also. I thought about expanding my brain for a bit recently (and, to be honest, it made my head ache a titch) and I’m going to do a few things, but surely tackling at least one decent mind-expanding book a month is a decent start.

I would love to read a book a week next year, but something tells me that forces will converge so that cannot possibly happen.

It occurred to the Husband last night that the only thing I ate on Sunday that everyone else didn’t was a piece of poundcake that the old lady neighbor brought over.

Wonder if she’s trying to poison me slowly…

I decided to test the theory last night, so I crammed three thin slices of the stuff down my gullet in rapid succession and, lo and behold, I’m still alive!

Weird conversation from last night:

Me: You know, instead of buying myself a new tote to replace my straw bag that finally disintegrated over the weekend, I could have just stapled two of the huge 2 1/2 gallon ziplocs together and added some sort of ribbon.

[I am carrying around my massive Christmas card project in a ziploc so huge that it makes me squeal with delight, you see. When did these zippy bags arrive on the scene? I have only just discovered them. At this point in the conversation, I indicated the Christmas card project in its baggie on the couch from my vantage point in the rocky squishy chair with the Crabcake on my lap.]

The Husband: [disinterested but polite grunty noise]

Me: I wonder if we could fit Charlie in one of those bags, if we folded him up just right.

The Husband: [gives me the narrowed crook eye] That’s really creepy.

Me: I didn’t mean it that way. But do you think he would fit?

The Husband: Seriously. Too creepy to talk about.

Me: I know the cat would fit.

The Husband: I’ll help you put the cat in one anytime you want.

End Scene.

If I wasn’t already wibbling on the verge of collapse with some minor stomach nusiance* that started at about 4 a.m., after a long and restless night of middle-of-the-road misery, writing out the following “Parent Statement” for McPantses’ first kindergarten application this morning would have done me right in.

Question: Please comment briefly on your reasons for wishing to have your child attend This Local Private School.** For example, what contributions do you hope we can make to your child’s development?

Answer: The Husband and I believe that This Local Private School will help enable our children to become successful adults. We have watched our friends’ children grow, learn and thrive in TLPS’s educational environment with interest and delight and we’d like to see the same of our children. Both of us appreciate the school’s rigorous academic standards and outstanding college placement. We place a very high value*** on education and its importance in life and will seek out the best possible schooling for our children, from kindergarten through college.

Oy.

We have testing in January, a parents’ dinner in January, playgroup in February and McPantses’ teacher has to fill out this two-page form about her development. The teacher is way more on the ball than I am: I have had the application for a month and just mailed it off today. I handed Miss Teacher the form this morning along with the stamped envelope to mail it off when she finished (it’s due in February) and she handed me a copy of the completed form when I stopped in to nurse the boychild at lunch. Wonder if she’ll fill out the other two school applications for me…

* I challenge even the most staunch anti-CIOers to deal with an infant who starts crying when you [gently] plunk him in the crib after prying him off your breast to run to vomit in the nearest toilet. The kid was asleep when I came back into his room, but when I creaked the big bed to get in it, his head popped right UP like one of those whack-a-mole things at Chuck E. Cheese.

** It’s TLPS according to us, anyway.

*** Well, no joke, hunh? Who doesn’t?

When McPantses started talking, we were shocked. I have everything she ever did her first year scribbled down in a notebook (would you expect any less of me?) and I could swear that she was saying “bye bye, dada” regularly by about 6 months.

The boychild, however, is a different story. He’ll be 10 months on December 27th and tho he’s a mover and a shaker, he’s behind his sister in the talky-talky. Over the past couple of weeks, he’s really surprised us, in a good way.

We have a sinister-looking art deco statue of a dog with a gold collar. I got it at an auction with my mother last year for about $20 and everyone, to a person, hates it (except for my mother and me). The dogs leave their bones at its feet and the cat sniffs around it with haughty unease.

Today, the Husband was standing with Charlie Crabcake in his arms and the boy looked down at the doggy statue (the real dogs are vacationing at the dog spa this weekend) and said “Dah! DAH! Uhf! UHF!”

We say several things to the boy on a regular basis, including “Dog dogs! Grruff Wruff!” and “Cat cat! Meow! ME-OOOOW!”

I guess he gets it.

Tonight at dinner, he shoved his fat fist in the air and started flapping his fingers and saying “Buh buh! BUH BUH!” He proceeded to wave and shout for half a minute.

He’s been teasing the Husband lately–the boy will grab a bite of food, hang his arm over the end of his high chair and say “Uhhhh OHHHHHHH!” before giving the Husband a knowing look and releasing the morsel (usually to the delight of the dogs circling below).

A few weeks ago, I was wondering if my child, who can army crawl across the house in a split second, but who doesn’t want to crawl regularly, was spot-on with the development. The kid will walk across the room while you hold his hands, but the rocking back and forth on the knees? Not so much. He can sit up by doing a sit-up (I can think of no other way to describe it) while using a human for leverage, but not once have I found him sitting up in his crib.*

He does things in his own order, this boy. I’m starting to think he might not crawl the regular way at all. He’s pulling up on chairs a good bit, and I guess that cruising around McPantses’ kiddie-craft-covered coffee table is coming up very soon.

In the span of years between McPantses and now, I had forgotten how magical this time is. We’re having a blast. After my recent post about how the kid doesn’t sleep (still doesn’t), we got over ourselves, the boychild and I, and went back to the crib/bed/crib/bed routine and this morning, I woke up with him scrooching up to me and grinning in my face.

I’m pretty sure he tried to eat my nose after that, but the sentiment was lovely. It’s good to be the maaaaah-mahhhhhhh.

And now he cries.

Seriously.

That’s funny.