a LOT of Christmas craziness

'Twas three days before Christmas
When all through the house,
Every creature was stirring, most especially the mouse.
The stockings were hung by the stairwell with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would know how to get in our house through the back door.

I wished the children were nestled all snug in their beds,
Because visions of chocolate and a bath dance in my head.

Finally Alexis in her kerchief and Tyler in his cap (??)
Settled down for a long (I hope) winter's nap!

When up in my room there arose such a clatter
Thankfully no one moved from their beds to see what was the matter.
Away to the bath I flew like a flash,
Turned on the water, and jumped in with a splash.

For the last 5 hours (and days!) there's been nothing but snow,
It's been enough to make my mind go.

When what to my hungry mouth should appear?
But a glass of soda and a giant sized Mr. Goodbar,
With calories and peanuts and chocolate,
I knew in a moment it would hit the spot.

More rapid than eagles the sugar rush came.
And I whistled and shouted, and wrote a poem, so LAME!
Now, Sugar! Now Peanuts! Now cocoa butter and palm shea!
On, chocolate! On, Milk! On Sunflower and Vegetable Oil!


Sorry, my creativity (if you want to call it that) ends there. I've concluded that the whole anticipation of Christmas is what's driving my kids batty--which in turn drives me extra batty (as you've just witnessed). So really, I'm ready for Christmas to be here and be done already (is that bad?), and then maybe we can all go back to normal. Or as normal as we get around here.

I know it's snowing everywhere, but it's now been snowing for the last 5 1/2 hours and we got probably 3 -4 inches of new snow outside. That's in addition to the snow we already had. I don't really mind it, but I know the longer it goes the harder it will be for Jeremy to get home tonight. And also, I do get slightly crazier when stuck in this house all day.

Because of the snow day I decided to make bean bags with the kids and let them help me on the sewing machine. Good idea, right? Well, kids have a way of making the best laid plans unravel. The stipulation was that their rooms had to be clean before we could make the bean bags, which really is not too hard or unreasonable. But you would have thought I'd just asked them to take down the Great Wall of China stone by stone and rebuild it 10 feet over, stone by stone. The instructions I gave Alexis for cleaning her room were: Pick up the first thing you see, decide where it goes, and put it in it's place. Then pick up the next thing you see and decide where it goes, and put it there. But in her mind it must have sounded like: Figure out how to get to the airport. From there figure out how to get to China. Once in China find the Great Wall. Then find some tools and figure out how to tear apart the wall. But make sure you remember which stones go next to each other, keep them in order or you'll never be able to rebuild the wall. Move everything over ten feet. Use a measuring tape if you don't know how much is ten feet. Now rebuild the wall. She simply could not do it.

Sometimes a little insight into the mind of a four year old would really be helpful. Maybe what I asked was too overwhelming. I mean, she does have the attention span of, well, a 4 year old, and every toy she picks up she seems to have a million ideas race through her head of how to play with it and what to do with it--but not one of those ideas is to put it away. Funny how her creativity can cause me to love her so much, yet also drive me to pull my hair out. I'm thinking the old phrase about women applies to kids too.
Children: You can't live with 'em, you can't live without 'em.

Alright, enough craziness for now.