Posted by Kimberly on December 31st, 2007 — Posted in Diva Girl, Kipple
I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this before, but even if I have, it bears repeating: I hate New Year’s Eve. It may even beat out Valentine’s Day as my least favourite commercially manufactured holiday. At least with Valentine’s Day, there’s candy. With New Year’s there’s just overinflated expectations and, now that I have a child old enough to indulge in same, whining and tears over the indignity of being denied the right to watch crappy tv until a giant ball drops from sky, thus ending an evening with far too much hoopla and not nearly enough payoff.
I have a hard enough time working up enthusiasm for the whole clean slate thing that I don’t feel–my personal New Year starts the first day of school–without being confronted with the “But Arthur gets to stay up until Midnight!” argument. Dude. Arthur is a fictional talking aardvark who has a pet dog (seriously, wtf?). I’m hardly going to be swayed by the fact that his parents let him do something. And even if I were so inclined, this is also the family that produced the whining wonder that is D.W. Again, hardly a stunning endorsement of their parenting decisions.
I’m really not up for this tantrum tonight. I’m tired, I have a headache borne of negotiating one too many battles over toys today, and no matter how many times I pick it all up, it still looks like Toys R Us threw up in my livingroom–forget sugarplums, at this point I’ve got visions of garbage bags dancing in my head. Enduring the monumental tantrum that is brewing over bedtime really isn’t how I want to spend the last moments of this year. But I also don’t want to start next year having set the precedent that we stay up until midnight. It’s not something I’ve done in past years, so why should I now just because some kids tv show put it into my kid’s head that this is what you do for New Year’s Eve. Thanks Arthur! You really dropped the ball on this one.
So, no reflective, navel gazing year end post from me. No uplifting looks towards the future. Just a sincere belief that it would be great to sleep through the initial moments of 2008.
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Posted by Kimberly on December 27th, 2007 — Posted in Zen Baby, Kipple
Regan: “You wanna know why Bina gave me Princess Luciana for Christmas, Mama?”
Me: “Why?”
Regan: “Because she loves me.”
Me (melting into a puddle of maternal goo and wanting to prolong the moment): “And why did you give her Princess Ro?”
Regan: “Because you told me to.”
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Posted by Kimberly on December 25th, 2007 — Posted in The Ladies, Diva Girl, Zen Baby, Kipple
Few things put the vastly different personalities of my daughters into stark relief like Christmas Morning.Diva Girl is a whirling dervish of excitement, blowing through the Christmas tree like the Tasmanian Devil on speed; The Zen Baby, not surprisingly, takes a more relaxed approach to the festivities.
Where Diva grabs her stocking and immediately unpends it all over the floor, thereby ensuring sensory overload what with the jumbled mess of toothbrushes, lipgloss, temporary tattoos and various odd and ends strewn about before her, Zen Baby is meticulous in her stocking excavation, each item withdrawn, examined, and exclaimed over before moving on to the next–until her sister grabs it and dumps it all over the floor for her, that is.
Within an hour of waking me up (at the crack of dark, but it’s one of the few times a year I don’t mind) and racing to the tree, Sabrina will have gone through all of her presents. Everything will have been catalogued, touched, and tested. Practically the minute she processes what the gift it, she’s moved on to the next thing. In her half of the room, the toys are scattered with reckless abandon, mixed, mingled, dropped where she was when the next thing caught her fancy. Regan, however, is still playing with the first toy she saw, and half of her packages remain ignored under the tree. It’s not that she’s not interested or lacking in gratitude, she just hasn’t gotten that far yet. She will, given time (and the mom-imposed restraint shown by her big sister), but it’s just not a priority to her. She likes this toy, and she will savour it.
Two very different little girls with two very different approaches to presents, and I suspect, life in general. One who lives full throttle, out loud, determined to wring everything possible from every experience and constantly leaping before she looks, the other with the unique ability to immerse herself in life, to fully experience each moment before moving on to the next, and always careful to be sure exactly how high the ledge is before she jumps. Both perfect in their own ways.
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Posted by Kimberly on December 25th, 2007 — Posted in Kipple
So, another Christmas Eve come and gone.
The Stockings were hung with care, and then lovingly laid under the tree when their weight exceeded the wee felt loops’ ability to hold them up.
The toys, books, and puzzles–an equal amount for each Lady–are all artfully arranged under the tree, with the fabulous tea set cleverly positioned between the two piles.
The cookies have been bitten, the milk drank, the carrots nibbled.
All that remains to complete the magic is The Ladies themselves, and their wide eyed wonder and delight as they embrace the magic of yet another Christmas morning with Santa.
Just like they have troubling settling and drifting off to the land of sugarplumps with the agonizing anticipation of Santa’s visit looming*, I have a hard time letting go of the excitement of being Santa and settling in to wait for my daughters to wake up and survey the fruits of my elvish labours. It’s funny, at the end of the day, I guess we have the same wish: For Christmas morning to hurry up and get here.
Merry Christmas everyone! Once the morning does finally get here, we’re off to the Big City for a couple of days of family cheer. Traditions (old and new), presents, great food, and a houseful of Aunts, Uncles, Grandparents, and most importantly, COUSINS! I hope your holiday has that much joy wrapped into it too.
*Just a word of warning to other parents. No matter how cool it seems, how techie and fun and educational, how magical even, do not, I repeat DO NOT, allow yourself to be sucked into the Norad Santa Watch. Trust me when I tell you it’s just too much pressure. One minute Santa’s in the Falkland Islands and you’re having a lovely teachable moment about the geography of the Americas, then suddenly Santa’s in Greenland–practically right next door! And then! Then he’s in Newfoundland and it’s only 8:15! The cookies! The stockings! The sleeping! Suddenly your laid back, quiet Christmas Eve has become a high stress mission–let’s move, let’s move, let’s move people!
What do I want for Christmas next year? For Santa’s sleigh to be outfitted with a cloaking device.
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Posted by Kimberly on December 24th, 2007 — Posted in Kipple
I may have mentioned before that we’re of the Catholic persuasion around here. We’re not exactly hardcore–more of the small “c” supermarket variety, really–but certainly Catholic enough to feel the pull of mass on Christmas Eve. Not Midnight Mass though. That’s waaay too much work and pressure with the overexcited, over tired children and the Santa presents still safely tucked away in the broom closet (the perfect hiding place! After all, how often does anyone go in there?). The “Children’s Mass” though, that’s just up our alley–it’s like Churchlite!
The organ music should have been the first clue. Nothing says “Children’s Mass” like Hark The Herald Angels Sings played in the tempo of a funeral dirge. Then there were the seating arrangements. In other years, all the children in the church are invited to leave their parents behind in the pews and go sit in front of the altar. This year, no invitation, no movement, just a bunch of restless kids jammed in among the adults, bored, restless, unable to see what’s going on. Which was not the traditional Nativity Play. There was no Nativity Play. At the Children’s Mass. WTH?
But none of that blatant disregard for the Children aspect of Children’s Mass can compare with the sermon.
Traditionally, the sermon is second to the Nativity Play in the Children’s Mass hierarchy, because on this day, the sermon is for the kids. This is the one mass of the year (outside of school mass, which tends to be more Q&A than homily) where the sermon is guaranteed to be pitched to a level the kids can understand. It’s still all about the Jesus of course, but the message is simplified. The thorny philosophical issues are put aside in favour of a lovely proclamation of faith, and it tends to be one of the most joyful, uplifting moments of the year.
This year? Not so much. This year, the guest priest thought that Children’s Mass meant that he should discuss children being murdered in the name of faith. Yes, instead of rehashing the Mary story for us, we were treated to a treatise on faith, faith featuring the highlights of Jesus’s life–You know, King Herod murdering the babies, the Nazarenes desire to throw Jesus off of a cliff, the crucifixion, that sort of thing. Oh, and the brilliant piece of wisdom that there has always been sin and scandal in the church (so apparently, we should just shut up and get over it if Father happens to have certain….predelictions. Because none of the Apostles were perfect either, you know). And then, the piece de resistance, how the price for faith is still being paid even today–martyrdom, it’s not just for Saints anymore!
He then went on to tell a very specific story about how 6 little Catholic school girls in some Middle Eastern country were surrounded by a group of Muslim men demanding their immediate conversion. At this point, my mind was working furiously. The organ music hadn’t tipped me off, the seating plan didn’t give me a clue, but I was starting to cotton on to the fact that this mass? Was not exactly “G” rated. And the thoughts running through my mind were, “Please don’t let him say they raped the girls. He won’t say that, right? Because devout Muslims have a huge problem with rape. Major sinnage there. So he’s not going there, right?” And he didn’t. The little girls in the story weren’t raped. They were beheaded. (And I’m sorry, I can’t even get into how the sermon that is supposed to be about a joyful promise of peace on earth somehow became a hateful exercise in racist fearmongering.)
There was another story, and then something about China and the underground explosion of Christianity there in the face of atheist government hellbent on persecution, and something about our responsibility as parents to foster that faith in our children, but by that point I wasn’t listening anymore. I was seething. I wanted to take my children and walk out of the church. I wanted to stand up in the middle of this abomination of a sermon and call him out on it, demand an explanation and an apology. I fantasized about making a scene at communion, refusing his wafer and instead denouncing his behaviour.
And then came home and wrote an angry blog post about it instead. I guess I really am a good little Catholic girl after all. Not good enough to ever set foot back in that particular church, though. And not good enough to refrain from sending the Bishop and the Pope a letter explaining to them exactly why. I hope that’s good enough.
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Posted by Kimberly on December 23rd, 2007 — Posted in Diva Girl, Kipple
As you may have gathered from the preceding “hoopla,” I am very big on Christmas tradition. There is, however, one seasonal tradition that I could definitely do without: Diva Girl’s traditional holiday meltdown.
For as long as I can remember, December 23rd has marked the day that Diva Girl official gives up on the concept of the Nice List and wholeheartedly embraces her place among The Naughty. I don’t know if it’s the pressure, the anticipation, or what, but every year is remarkably the same–Sabrina always ends up losing her shit in a spectacularly ugly way.
Much though I’ve worked so hard to create the belief in Santa, to nurture it and protect it in the face of an increasingly cruel, unforgiving world, today is the day that I fantasize about pulling back the curtain and revealing the whole thing for the sham that it is just so that I can explain to my daughter exactly why she won’t be getting any presents this year. I won’t of course. I’ll jingle the bells and nibble the cookies and fill the stockings, and if I’m honest, I’ll look forward to doing so all day tomorrow–I love my daughter after all, and the idea that she would be disappointed on Christmas, screaming in frustration rather than squealing in delight, is just not one I truly want to entertain.
Except…Maybe a little, in my Grinchier moments as I deal with the noise noise noise of her lack of gratitude and her unwillingness to help out and her just general crappy attitude as best described by loud, angry screams and rants against the injustice of it all. When I really do wonder why, exactly, I spent all that time, effort, and money getting her just the right things, the things that show just how well I know her, just how much I love her, even if she can’t always see it, when I could have been out getting a pedicure and a really great pair of shoes. The answer, of course, is that I do love her. And I do love to make her happy, and I do look forward to seeing her face when she sees what Santa has left for her-despite all indications to the contrary–under the tree.
But I wonder, would it be wrong if, in addition to the Littlest Pet Shops and the 17 different kinds of fairy, if Santa also left a little note this year, telling her to get with the program and stop with the tantrums before she manages to completely take herself out of the running with him? Or is my heart really just 2 sizes too small?
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Posted by Kimberly on December 22nd, 2007 — Posted in Kipple, Blah Blah Blog
Nola over at Nola Notes tagged me for this meme “hoopla” that her friend came up with. I’m not really into memes “hooplas,” but it seemed sort of grinchy to decline. So, the Holiday Hoopla Meme “Hoopla”:
Here are the rules, as decreed by someone higher up than myself.
1. List 12 random things about yourself that have to do with Christmas
2. Please refer to it as a ‘hoopla’ and not the dreaded ‘m’-word
3. You have to specifically tag people when you’re done. None of this “if you’re reading this, consider yourself tagged” stuff is allowed…then nobody ends up actually doing it. The number of people who you tag is really up to you — but the more, the merrier to get this ‘hoopla’ circulating through the blogosphere.
4. Please try and do it as quickly as possible. The Christmas season will be over before we know it and I’d like to get as many people involved as possible.
Twelve Random Christmassy Things About Me
1. I believed in Santa Claus for a long time. Like a really, really long time. I think I might have been around 12 when I finally figured it out. (Which is weird, because I pretty much never believed in the tooth fairy–massive orthodontic work involving the extraction of nearly all of your baby teeth will do that to you.)
2. I still have–and use–the stocking my mom made for me when I was 5. It’s red felt and has an angel on the front. It has an angel because I’m the fifth kid and by the time she got to making mine, Santa, Rudolph, Frosty, and a Christmas tree were already taken. When my mom asked me what Christmas thing I wanted on my stocking–I think she was aiming for “Star”–my answer was….”God.” Angel turned out to be close enough. Over the years both of the Ladies have coveted that stocking and begged me to let it be theirs. It’s the only thing of “mine” that I have never, ever been willing to share with my children.
3. The Ladies have the Santa and the Frosty that go with the set. In their misspent youth, the brothers who owned these stockings decided they didn’t want them, so I took them. By the time they came to their senses, I had picked their names off and had my kids’ names on. heh
4. I’m strictly an Angel girl when it comes to the top of the tree. And while I don’t use it, I also rescued the angel that topped our tree during our childhood from the trash heap a few years ago. She’s kinda cheesy and definitely showing her age (older than me), but she’s Christmas and it wouldn’t be the same without her.
5. That Elf on a Shelf thing that’s so big right now? We’ve been doing that since I was a kid. My mom had these two little polkadotted elves who sat on the painting in the livingroom. She told us that they reported back to Santa whether we were naughty or nice. We were always good in the livingroom in December. And if you guessed that those elves now reside in MY livingroom? Bingo. They live here year round though, not just at Christmas time.
6. Santa doesn’t wrap the presents he brings here. Everything is delivered already out of the box and ready to play with. It’s better for the environment, eliminates that awkward question about why Santa uses the same wrapping paper you do, and you don’t have to do battle with all those damn twisties with an overexcited child jumping up and down in front of you demanding if it’s ready yet.
7. I have never cooked a Christmas dinner, and I never will.
8. I prefer colourful Christmas trees. None of this designer all-gold monochromatic theme nonsense. I like riotous colour on my trees. And white lights? Ick.
9. I love the old Rankin Bass Christmas specials. Love them love them love them. I even spent a ridiculous amount of money to buy The Ladies Rudolph and Clarice from Build A Bear this year.
10. Each year I buy each of The Ladies a Christmas ornament. When they grow up and leave me (sob), they’ll take their ornaments with them to decorate their first apartments for Christmas.
11. I like doing the stockings best. Buying the presents is fun, but the stockings are where I really excel. I love picking up those little odds and ends and cool bits to fill them with–all those things they never knew they wanted, along with all those things they always covet but I won’t buy them. It’s so fun to see their excitement as the excavate the stockings, pulling out treasure after treasure. It’s one of those moments where I glow with pride, confident that if nothing else, I’ve done this right. I hope when they’re older The Ladies will remember the stockings and think, “You know, Mom really knew us.”
12. I don’t like oranges. When I was a kid, every letter to Santa would contain a reminder that I don’t like oranges and a request that he put an apple in my stocking instead.
Ok, so that’s me. So on to the tagging. I tag Kate because I cannot imagine celebrating Christmas in shorts and flip beside the swimming pool, Eden because I want to see how the whole Yule/Christmas thing blends, Thordora because she’s in desperate need of some Christmas spirit, Mav because she’s just starting to create her own traditions, and Jenny because I can’t wait to see what she would answer. You’re all IT.
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Posted by Kimberly on December 21st, 2007 — Posted in Diva Girl, Kipple
I know that there are different schools of thought on the subject, but I’m going to go on the record here and say that at our house, we are firmly Pro-Santa. I wouldn’t say that we’re all about the Claus–we are Catholic, after all–but the jolly old elf does play a significant role in our holiday celebrations.
In our house, for example, all presents come from Santa. I give each of The Ladies a new pair of jammies on Christmas Eve, but that’s it. Every single thing under the tree on Christmas morning–and other than those jammies and The Ladies’ gifts to each other, our tree remains bare until the 25th–is from Santa. Sometimes it sucks, like when your daughter’s most compelling argument for the existence of Santa Claus is the fact that her mother would never buy her all that stuff, but for the most part, I love the fact that magic is such a big part of our Christmas and I work hard to keep it that way.
As Diva Girl gets older I keep worrying that this will be it. As more and more of her friends join the ranks of unbelievers, I keep thinking that this will be the year when she’s no longer able to suspend her disbelief and embrace the wholly improbable idea that some fat guy in a red suit holes up in the tundra all year with a bunch of elves who magically create the exact same stuff you can buy at WalMart and then bends the laws of time and space to sneak into kids’ houses to leave it under the tree and sneak a few cookies along the way. It hasn’t happened yet, but I keep waiting.
She’s clinging pretty hard to those beliefs, though. So hard that sometimes, I wonder if maybe I shouldn’t start dropping some hints (and not just because it would be nice to get some credit for all that great stuff under the tree rather than dismissed as the person who gives her pajamas). Listening to her plan her show and tell last night was one of those time. Diva Girl, you see, plans to base her show and tell on “Why I Know There Is A Santa Claus.”
Her evidence, such as it is, is pretty compelling. The Squeaky Baby Santa returned to her after she lost it at the mall nearly a year before (not as easy as it sounds; that particular doll had been discontinued years before and it was only a fluke that I came across it in a thrift store a couple of weeks before Christmas.). The jingle bells Santa “forgot” when he stopped for a cookie break. The copy of The Polar Express Santa personally dedicated to her after she did such a good job taking care of the bells last time this happened (that Santa is a forgetful guy!), the magic Key Santa uses to get into our apartment. And of course, her letter from Santa (not one of the grinchy ones). It’s actually adorable to watch her assemble her arguments, and I feel no small amount of pride that I’ve been able to cast this magical spell for her, but I’m just not sure it’s such a good idea to allow her to go to school and start laying out her case to a bunch of cynical fourth graders.
So, what’s a mama to do? How do you join the message of “yes, there is a Santa Claus” with the idea of “maybe it’s not a good idea to talk about this with all your friends” without the jig being up? Do I let her go to school with all her paraphrenalia, ready to convince all those doubters in the existence of the Big Guy in Red, only to come home devastated that they teased her? Do I sit her down and have a chat about “The Spirit of Santa Claus”? How do I preserve the magic and her self-esteem in a situation where the two ideas seem to be mutually exclusive?
Update: Sometimes Diva Girl’s teachers actually come through. Hard as I tried, I could not dissuade her from her show and tell plan. Short of “Everyone will laugh at you and call you a baby,” there was no convincing her that this was a bad plan. So, I let her go, hoping that the other kids wouldn’t be too cruel, and that she wouldn’t come home too crushed. I know at least some of them still want to believe, so I was hoping they’d provide some support and cushion the blow.
None of that proved necessary, however. Diva Girl’s teacher handled this beautifully–exactly the way I would have, actually. Her approach was simple, no fuss, no muss, and avoided the mockery, the teasing, and the possibility of a full scale Santa war on the last day before Christmas vacation. What was her brilliant solution? She simply didn’t manage to find time today for show and tell. Diva Girl is of course bitter that she missed her chance in the spotlight, but I’m going with small price to pay.
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Posted by Kimberly on December 20th, 2007 — Posted in Kipple, Scarlet Letters
I think, as others have pointed out, it’s the glamour aspect that, for me, is at the root of my problem with the newest Spears pregnancy. Jamie Lynn, with her privilege and her position, isn’t going to have the typical teen mom experience. There will be no uncomfortable trip to the local Birthright Association for ill-fitting, secondhand maternity clothes to drape across her burgeoning belly. No humiliating wait at the local welfare office for some overworked, undercompassionate civil servant to pick through the details of her life and offer her the barest amount of assistance possible to survive–along with thinly veiled judgments and scorn. There will never be a time when she’s overtired from working as much a she can while juggling a sick, screaming baby. There will never be a time that she’s tempted to cut the baby’s bottle with water to make the milk last longer because she’s nearly out and her cheque doesn’t come until next week.
Jamie Lynn is going to make teen pregangcy glamorous. She’ll look cute and stylish in her maternity clothes. Her baby won’t have battered handmedowns picked up at garage sales or donated by the local church association, it will have the best and the cutest of everything. There will be photoshoots and magazine spreads and a completely skewed and unrealistic presentation of this life.
Yes, she has to do it in the public eye. And yes, she has to put up with the fact that mothers like me are writing posts like this about her. And I’ll bet that that must be its own shade of awful. But somehow, I still feel like she’s less entitled to my support than the girls like Kayla, who unlike Miss Spears did not grow up with every advantage only to throw them all away.
I DO hold her to a higher a standard simply because I don’t know her, cannot invite her over, cannot show my daughter the realities of her situation versus what will be splashed across glossy, airbrushed magazine covers.
Update: Oh, and it looks like I was wrong on the whole baby daddy thing yesterday. Looks like Jamie Lynn and Casey have broken up. Shocking that. I mean, gosh, pregnant teens always stay together right? Just like Barbie and Ken.
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Posted by Kimberly on December 19th, 2007 — Posted in Kipple, Scarlet Letters
So, Jamie Lynn Spears is pregnant. Maybe it makes me a hypocrite, but my knee jerk reaction to this news was to block Zoey 101 from our TV lineup.
I’ve been trying to think about why that is, why I have a huge problem with my daughter looking up to this girl and making her a role model now that she’s fallen off her pedestal. It can’t be the single mother aspect; I am, after all, the champion of the concept that you don’t need a marriage license to sign a birth certificate. And unlike me, Jamie Lynn is apparently with her baby daddy and planning to stay that way. No sordid one night stands here, just two crazy kids in love.
And therein, I think, lies my problem: They’re kids. Sixteen year olds, to be exact. Sixteen year olds should not be looking for cars with child safety locks. Their “cool ride” should not be a Quinny. Sixteen year olds should be kids, they shouldn’t be raising them.
But it’s more than just sadness at a childhood curtailed that’s behind my reaction to Spears the Younger’s big news. I didn’t have this visceral feeling of disgust and judgment when I found out about Kayla’s pregnancy. In that situation, I was saddened and disappointed, but I didn’t judge Kayla for her choices or the consequences they’d brought into her life; I reached out, tracked down baby clothes for her, and let her know that I would be there to support her as she tried to figure this single mom thing out and do right by her son. So why do I feel angry and appalled that Jamie Lynn Spears finds herself in exactly the same situation?
Maybe because I don’t routinely invite Kayla into my livingroom, while Miss Spears visits as often as Diva Girl can arrange it. Maybe because Zoey 101 is a role model to young girls, and I feel cheated that Jamie Lynn completely betrayed that wholesome image she projects on television by making exactly the same mistake that thousands of other teenage girls make every year. Maybe because we have unreasonable expectations of our celebrities and expect them to be somehow more than human and above the sordid,mundane realities of life outside of reality television?
Possibly. All I know is that Zoey 101 has been expelled from this particular livingroom. Although, my money is it won’t be an issue since Zoey will more than likely be expelled from Nickelodeon post haste, their messages of support notwithstanding. I mean, can you imagine if they wrote it in?
And that makes me wonder, is it just that she’s on TV? If it were The Ladies beloved Teenage Babysitter, would I have have this same strong reaction? Would I still feel that she was no longer a fit role model for my children? I don’t know. Maybe it’s the fact that she and Kayla are both “real” people with very little glamour attached to their lives while Jamie Lynn is a celebrity, but when I think of the two I know, I feel empathy and compassion, but when I think of the last one on the list, all I can muster is a dismissive disgust and the incredibly uncharitable sentiment that that the last thing I want as a role model for my daughter is a knocked up 16 year old. (Not that I was really keen on Zoey or Jamie Lynn as a role model under any circumstances, but this goes beyond my level of tolerance for seemingly harmless tweenie pop culture.)
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