Warning: may contain graphic cuteness. And thankfulness.

Technical difficulties solved (thanks to my brother-in-law), here is my blog video debut. It's not a minivan giveaway, but it's still worth watching.

I'm pretty sure that sometimes I come off as being a sarcastic ingrate. I am sarcastic, but I am very, very grateful for all that I have. Chief among my blessings are my superhero husband and three beautiful boys and the best family in the entire world. This, everyone, is why I am thankful. Happy Thanksgiving!

A post about why there's no post

Oh no! I'm having some, um, technical difficulties. I'm working on a post titled, roughly, "What I am thankful for," (without the dangling preposition, of course) but am having trouble. I'll tell you what I'm not thankful for: a piece of sh*t stupid computer that seems to be in its death throes. Anyway. I'll be back, with a stupendous post that involves video! and music! and a minivan giveaway! Okay, scratch the minivan. But check back soon, cause after I get some help from my awesome, computerly-talented brother-in-law, I'll have a Thanksgiving surprise.

A little help, please

I think I'm having writer's block. I've been trying to write a post on National Adoption Month for days now. I finally just threw in the towel; it ain't gonna happen. There's too much I want to say, it's too tied in knots, and nobody would want to read it. So, I'm stealing a post from my sister, Ali, instead. She and her husband are adopting a son from South Korea next month. She wrote this recently, and I thought it was lovely:

Jaden will have three moms in his life. I think a lot about all three of these moms on a daily basis: his first mother, his foster mother, and me. I think about these three moms so much. I will meet his foster mother soon. She has taken care of him every day since he was just a tiny, tiny baby. She knows his cries when he is hungry, she took care of him this fall when he was sick, and she is preparing to say good-bye to him in the next few weeks. I want to write her a letter to have translated into Korean. I want to tell her how much peace her love and care has brought to my husband and me during these torturous weeks waiting to meet our son. I want to tell her thank you.

I may or may not ever meet Jaden's first mother-- his birthmother. Her story is one I cannot imagine, but her life will be linked forever to mine. I do not want to trivialize or minimalize her decisions and sacrifices by speculating what may or may not have been. But I do want to recognize that I think of her daily. She knew Jaden from the beginning, and has given us a son to love for a lifetime. Our gratitude for this is indescribable.

Over the past two weeks, I feel like I have started identifying as a mother. There is no rulebook here-- becoming a mother through adoption. I am overcome with excitement, fear, love, amazement, and awe simultaneously. I'm going to be Jaden's mom. I don't want to let his other two down.

Ali writes about her adoption process on her blog, Days of Our Lives. (Kindly direct all complaints about that unfortunate title to her.) Congratulations, Ali and Dustin. Words cannot express how happy I am for you.

The glass half-full: at least he still had his pants

Sometimes I like to think I remember what it's like to be a kid. And then something happens to remind me that I have absolutely no clue.

For instance, take Friday.

It's fair to say that Jensen had a bad Friday. Among other things:

• He didn't have a coat to wear to school (and it was pretty chilly) because he left it in Jeff's car the night before. Instead he wore a woefully inadequate sweatshirt.
• His teacher moved him to a different desk because he keeps getting in trouble for talking too much.
• He lost his hat and gloves. It was the second time he'd worn them.
• I had the nerve to make him call the bus barn to check the lost and found for said hat and gloves. This was mortifying for him. This may be one of those moments he relives in a therapy session in 17 years.

He doesn't like to screw up (usually) and by bedtime the weight of the day had crushed him. He was in tears, and my mommy heart kind of ached for him.

Oh, but wait. Turns out he had withheld the best part. Saturday morning he worked up the nerve to tell me that he also lost his shirt at school.

I'll let that sink in.

Yes, he misplaced what most would consider to be an essential article of clothing. Don't you hate it when that happens? He doesn't really remember where or why he took it off. "I think my top half got kind of hot," was the best explanation he could offer. Which makes sense, in a random sort of way. Still, questions abound.

So, like I said, things like this prove that I really have no insight into my kids' realities. But even if I could remember how overwhelming it sometimes is to be seven, I truly don't think that inexplicably ending up half-naked would be on my radar.

The complete and total idiot's guide to Christmas card photos

Here's a fun! and easy! way to start the holiday season: a do-it-yourself Christmas card photo shoot! After all, nothing says "festive" like crying children and swearing parents. Want awesome holiday pics like ours? Here's a foolproof step-by-step guide:

1) Do not plan ahead. This is crucial. Pictures better reflect your kids' personalities when they're spontaneous. So spring it on them (and your photographer/husband) with no advanced warning. (Added bonus: your husband will love you for this!)

2) Get the kids completely wound up. This always makes for successful pictures.

3) Coordinated outfits are not necessary. Maybe try for something without food stains or holes, but really... who cares? Although, in retrospect, I kind of wish we'd gone with Evan's "A Very Camo Christmas" theme. Combat-themed Christmas cards rock.

4) Make sure your husband has to spend at least 37 minutes making unnecessary (he says "nuanced," whatever) camera adjustments. This gives the kids adequate time to start pinching each other and assures that someone will start crying.

5) Bribe kids with leftover Halloween candy that no one wants. Example: "I'll give you Milk Duds if you stop crying." It kind of works.

6) Time to put the baby in the frame! Be sure to get him overexcited so he wants to kiss everyone.

7) "Smile!"

8) "No, kids, your real smiles."

9) "Um, guys, could you maybe not show us your tonsils?"

10) {sigh} Put away the camera. Tell your husband to stop dropping f-bombs in front of the kids. Open a beer. Consider studying up on Photoshop; after all, with the 54 pictures he just took, there's gotta be something salvageable. Right?

11) Make a note to call the Sears Portrait Studio first thing in the morning.

Motherhood is really hard, the weaning edition

Bony babies aren't cute. They look like scrawny birds. They look fetal, while at the same time looking eerily geriatric. But they do not look cute or cuddly or nurtured.

Caleb didn't gain weight for the first two months of his life. As a matter of fact he lost weight, and an alarming amount of it. It was only after we started "supplementing" breastfeeding with formula that he at least went into a weight holding-pattern. We never really figured out what was wrong. He fell asleep every time I put him to the breast. He didn't latch on well. He just didn't care.

When we poured formula down his little baby throat, he would accept it. This at least prevented the doctor from calling him "failure to thrive," which, despite my academic and clinical knowledge as a nurse, I heard as a criticism of my abilities. But I stubbornly would not give up the hope of breastfeeding. I nursed him every two hours, by the timer, around the clock. For sixty-some-odd days.

I cried. A lot. Every time I held his bony little body I felt a sickening thud of failure. Every time someone said, "Oh, he's so tiny!" I heard an indictment of my mothering abilities.

Breastfeeding had always come very easily for me and my babies. My first two babies were fat, pink piggies who nursed like champions, and I was a milk machine. This time, I felt dried up. Rejected. I did not recognize mothering from behind a bottle, but nursing, which had been the very definition of mothering for me, an act of nurturing, nourishing, and symbiosis, was failing. Nothing seemed right anymore. I didn't want formula to be the answer. But bottles were quickly becoming preferable to an exercise in desperation.

Then, he figured it out, almost literally overnight. His older brother was in the hospital, having had emergency lung surgery. I was at my wit's end, sleepless, worrying about two children. And he just started doing it right, and got fat and greedy and cute. Somehow, all those hours and tears and worries paid off.

And now? After all that hard work, the gratification of success, the struggle to define myself, yet again, as a mother, I'm weaning him. I am taking it away from him. After all that effort, I'm walking away from it.

Because I can't do it anymore.

Yes, breastfeeding is amazing. Beautiful. You know all the arguments. They're all true. And you know what else? It is one of the hardest things I've ever done. It leaves me exhausted, physically and emotionally. I can't eat enough to maintain energy for both of us. I'm still up at least once a night. I hate the way it makes my body look-- soft and matronly and indulgent. There are days when I just do not want to be touched, or needed in such a, well, needy way. I'm ready for Jeff to be the one who can make it all better sometimes. I want to recognize myself inside this body again. I am, quite literally, sucked dry.

So the weaning begins, hopefully to be done somewhere right around his first birthday next month.

And, as breastfeeding is a perfect metaphor for my mothering style, weaning is the logical extension of that metaphor. Where do I draw the line? How do I embrace the conflicting emotions that arise in this one parenting act? The wanting to be "free," the guilt associated with that desire?

I've done it twice before. This is the last time. One of these days, one of these nursings will be the last one-- the very thought leaves me feeling distinctly adrift. It's almost unthinkable that I will never do this again, that my little Caleb is growing apart from me, and that there will never be another little baby who needs me to give him sustenance. And yet. I am looking very forward to the liberation.

It's part of the complex balance that I must negotiate, measuring my impulses as mother, wife, woman, daughter, sister, me.... It's all in there, tugging at me, and none of it is black and white. I just have to find the best shade of gray that I can.

Can I just suspend his development now?

Jensen drew this picture of me this weekend. (And, yes, I did ask his permission to use it on my blog. I did not tell him what I was going to write about it. Whatever.)




I know, I know. There are a couple of problems with his rendering of moi. First: I have no hair. Second: what's going on with my nose? But those things pale in comparison with the real problem. Let's zoom in a bit:

Me: "Um, what's on my tummy?

Jensen: (all sly, wink, wink) "You know...."

Me: "Uh..." (I'm in a total panic, wondering if I'm pregnant again and my seven-year-old knows before I do. Once I decide that this is definitely not the case, I continue my query.)

Me: "No, I guess I really don't know what that is."

Jensen: (still sly, kind of pointing to his chest) "What do girls have that boys don't?"

Me: "..."

So tell me: what's more troubling? The fact that my kid drew my boobs, or the fact that they're on my abdomen? God, the truth hurts.

Do NOT put this inside a dead bird

I heard a rumor that Thanksgiving is approaching. Which seems pretty ridiculous, you know, because I could have sworn that it's still September. Early October at the latest. But, I looked at the calendar and it's true: Thanksgiving is next week. Insanity, I tell you.

Guess I'd better get thinking about food.

Interestingly, for someone who loves to cook and for a holiday completely centered around an enormous meal, I really don't like Thanksgiving dinner. It's all so geriatric cafeteria. Turkey? Bleh. Don't even get me started on gravy: it's slop. Cranberry sauce? Sweet potatoes with marshmallows? Are you joking?! But: I really like green bean casserole, the kind with cream of mushroom soup and those divine french-fried onions. And stuffing. I. love. stuffing.

In truth, I'm a food snob, kinda. I'm fully committed to things like fresh herbs and unsalted butter and homemade marinara and mincing my own garlic. Stuff like that. But my favorite stuffing is a far cry from any of that. It is comfort food. And it is heavenly.

The stuffing we make is a recipe from my Grandma Klages, a Depression-era German farmwife extraordinaire. Actually, the recipe came from one of her friends, I think. We make, like, quadruple recipes because it's so scrumptious. (Frequently I only eat this and the Green Bean Delight.) And you will notice that it does not call for real butter. Nope. It calls for "oleo," which is how my grandmother referred to margarine. Actually, the full name was "oleomargarine." Old School, man. Anyway, despite my uppity food ways, I have never used butter in this recipe.

Please also note that this stuffing does not get stuffed into a bird. That is a repulsive practice, as far as I'm concerned. (Seriously: shoving mushy bread up a dead bird's butt?! Who thought of this?) I actually physically gagged the first time I had stuffing that had actually been cooked inside a carcass: so goopy, so funky, so... ugh. Technically, I guess, this is "dressing" rather than "stuffing." Stuff, if you must. But you do so at your own risk. I will not stuff, and will stubbornly continue to call this "stuffing."

And a final note: it's a pretty loose recipe. I think most of the measurements are just estimates that have been written down over the years. It has not been refined in a test kitchen or written according to formula. You just kind of make it however seems right.

So here it is:
The Best Stuffing That Was Never Stuffed
1 package breadcrumbs (8 oz)
2 stalks celery, chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
1 stick oleo
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
4 cups chicken broth (in my experience, it needs more so it doesn't get dry)
1 cup milk
2 eggs
Poultry seasoning, or sage (it doesn't say how much. Maybe a teaspoon? More?)

Cook oleo, celery, and onion. Add salt, pepper, and poultry seasoning. Mix with breadcrumbs. Mix broth, milk, and eggs together. Stir into bread mixture. Bake in a 9x13 pan at 350 degrees for about an hour.

Now I must go find a turkey, I suppose. I still can't believe Thanksgiving is next week. Seriously, I'm so lucky I don't live in Canada, because if I'd had to be ready for Thanksgiving a month ago, I'd have been completely hosed.

[Oh, and I'm contributing this to Mr. Lady's call for Thanksgiving recipes at Whiskey in My Sippy Cup, which was one of the very first blogs I ever started reading and it is awesome. Seriously, I'm a complete blogging amateur and am totally unworthy of putting anything up there, but I'm just gonna suck it up and do it. (And she does live in Canada, by the way.)]

TGIF

Ooo, a weekend! I'm so excited. I'm a little hesitant to tell you what we're doing, because I don't want to make anybody jealous. But I can tell you're dying to find out, so read on:

Friday
No school. God, I hate no-school days. This morning will be tolerable. It's the afternoon that's a bitch. However! Because I'll still harbor some fantasy that I'm borderline-competent, maybe when Caleb is napping we'll do something fun! and together! that good moms do with their kids, like make cookies!!! Which will be really fun for, like, two minutes and 29 seconds until Evan starts whining about how he wants a cookie before the oven is even heated and Jensen starts telling him to shut up and then they argue about who gets to help and somebody drops an egg on the floor and then I discover we're out of flour and Evan is still whining and Jensen thumps him on the back of the head and I start yelling which wakes up the baby who then screams for the next 45 minutes and I can get nothing else done and when Jeff (finally!) gets home the kitchen is a disaster, I'm a stark-raving bitch and two-thirds of the kids are crying and Jensen is big-kid surly and there are no cookies and I'm cracking open a beer.

Okay. So much for Friday. Let's move on.

Saturday
I already hate Saturday. This morning Jeff leaves at 5:45am and won't return until Sunday. This day? Is the reason that God invented television and McDonald's. I will wake up Saturday morning already having abandoned any thoughts of competency. I suck. This is the day that I probably won't even take a shower. Doesn't matter, though, because I won't see another human being besides the children, who don't notice whether I get to eat, much less groom. My only adult interaction will occur on Facebook, which I will check compulsively but will have me in a total funk by about 12:30 pm because nobody is sending me messages because everyone else has a life.

And because I'm the sole parent here I won't even be able to drink. I'll have to self-medicate with large amounts of Doritos and left-over Halloween candy.

The only things that could make Saturday any worse would be a trip to Super WalMart, an outbreak of explosive diarrhea, or maybe a traumatic amputation.

Bleh.

Sunday
Soon after breakfast, Jeff comes home. Yea! Today has to be better, right?

Hell, no. Because you know what I get to do this afternoon? Accompany Evan to a preschool birthday party. Betcha can't guess where? Oh, all, right: Chuck E. Cheese's. Which was invented by a germ-loving, parent-hating, bioterrorist crackhead who makes the worst pizza in the world. I don't even think the place has a liquor license, which means I'll have to take a flask. I think if I fill it with peppermint schnapps the other moms probably will just think I'm chewing gum to make my breath so minty-fresh and won't suspect it's because I'm hiding out behind the whack-a-mole game doing shots. I'll try to make it behind the ski-jump-thing to curl up and pass out.

So, yeah, that's the plan. I feel a little better, having gotten this off my chest. But still: it's gonna be a long-ass weekend. Feel free to send prayers. Condolences. Benzodiazepines. Whatever.

Maybe I'll enter another contest someday

I just won something!!!

The Blurb/Parent Bloggers Network Halloween photo contest, to be exact. Grand Prize, even.

I've been kind of waiting for the results, and was excited to the announcement in my reader this morning. I figured my best shot was at Best Handmade Costume. But my heart sank as I scrolled down, because when I saw the jellyfish that won that category, I knew I had been outdone.

"Better luck next time, me," I thought, and continued to scroll down to admire the remaining winners.

And I about passed out when I saw my little Jensen, all dressed up as a mummy, under "Grand Prize Winner." Shut. Up.

Seriously. I never enter contests, because I am shy and it feels like self-promotion to me, and I am the worst self-promoter in the entire world. If my life depended on me being a salesperson, I would die. No question.

But for some reason I entered the contest and now I have $75 toward publishing a Blurb book of my blog-- what better way to document my beginning ventures into this crazy blogging world?

Thanks a million to PBN and Blurb and their judges: Tracey of Mother May I and Shutter Sisters, Casey of Moosh in Indy, and Aimee of Greeblemonkey. Congratulations to the other winners with their amazing (seriously, the pink baby octupus? that is so cute it shouldn't be legal) costumes, and to all the entrants, who all had great costumes and great posts. And be sure to click through to see the winners here-- they're adorable!

Update: At breakfast, I told Jensen his picture won. "Isn't that exciting?!" I asked. He agreed that it was. Then, with all the seriousness a seven-year-old can muster, he put his hand on my shoulder and said, "But, Mom, remember not to brag." Buzzkill.

The National Association of Rubber Chickens for the Improvement of Public Education

I do not understand the power of the rubber chicken.

Jensen earned a prize at school the other day for meeting behavioral expectations. Woo-hoo! I guess he didn't bite anybody or pee on his desk or take a semi-automatic weapon to school. He damn well better not do those things, but according to his school, such remarkable behavior earned him a prize.

You know what he got? A friggin' rubber chicken. Public tax dollars at work.

But I should not belittle it. It's the best toy in the world.

The minute he touches it, he gets this smarmy look on his face and thinks he has been instantly transformed into The Funniest Person In The World.

The weird thing is, it has the same eerie power over the rest of us. The mere sight of it sends Evan into fits of giggles. Just talking about it cracks us up. "Jensen, take your chicken off the counter." "Your chicken smells bad." "No, you may not take your chicken to Cub Scouts." It's all too stupid. Jeff hid it in the bushes last night. A massive chicken hunt ensued. The kids collapsed with the sheer hilarity of it all. (I don't get it, either.)

So he got a prize for doing what we expect him to do. I'm not at all sure that sticker charts are going to counter the personal and societal demons that many kids wrestle-- the kids who do bite and bring weapons to school and other sad and scary things. Quite probably, rewards from Weasley's Wizard Wheezes are not going to provide enough incentive to motivate long-term success. But if they make day-to-day classroom management a bit easier, then so be it.

Now. I'm going to carefully back down off my soap box, go locate this chicken, and rig it up in a stock pot on the stovetop. That'll kill him.

Political advertising dollars well-spent

Bear with me; or, more precisely, bear with Evan. I'm sure you're sick to death of politics and politicians. But Evan is only four, and is not known for adjusting to change well. The abrupt end to the feeding frenzy has left him feeling a bit lost.

You probably all know my political leanings. Evan, on the other hand, simply adores John McCain. Perhaps it's his grandfatherly appearance. Perhaps it's that he referred to everyone as his "friend." Perhaps it's the military connection; as a boy's boy, Evan has a developmentally-appropriate interest in all things explosive. I don't know, but Evan talks about him fondly. Every time he wears self-proclaimed "fancy clothes" (ie, shirts with buttons and without stains or tears), he struts around proudly and says, "I look like John McCain!"


Yesterday he drew this picture:


Evan: "Mommy, this one is John McCain and this one is George Bush. [thoughtful pause] Are John McCain and George Bush brothers?"

Me: "No, they aren't."

Evan: "But look at this picture. Don't you think they look a lot alike?"


Who can argue with such logic?

Anyway. I don't know whether the Obama campaign should be ashamed that a four-year-old took their advertisements so literally, or embarrassed that they didn't come up with this idea....

And this is how road rage starts

Jensen got kind of bored during that week he was quarantined and missed 157 days of school. In order to keep him from passing time by tattooing "love" and "hate" on his knuckles, we allowed him to play some video games.

So, there he sat, playing some kind of driving game. (Harrowing, by the way. Based on this demonstration, he may be allowed to drive when he's, like, 31.) He was wearing plastic Halloween vampire teeth, because what self-respecting seven-year-old boy doesn't wear vampire dentures while playing video games? I don't remember what I was doing, but for the sake of argument, let's say I was cleaning. Or pretending to clean. Whatever.

Oh, and before I go any further, let me just offer some self-defense: I have never (I don't think) dropped an F-bomb on another driver. Maybe some other charming stuff, but not that. At least not with kids in the car.

So, Jensen, driving like a maniac, suddenly cut loose with an explosive "Buck you!" Remember, vampire teeth: the "B" was pretty fuzzy. Not unlike an "F."

This, understandably, caught my attention. "Excuse me?" I politely inquired.

Jensen repeated, "Buck you!" Again with the fuzzy "B."

I icily asked to whom he was speaking.

"That other car! Buck you!"

Because I thought good parenting skills would dictate that I clarify before yelling, I asked, "Would you kindly remove the teeth and spell that?"

He removed the prosthetic teeth. And with enormous eye-rolling and sighing and condescension implying that I was quite possibly the stupidest creature to ever take in air, he enunciated:
"B. U. C. K. Y. O. U."

"Oh," I said, my mind temporarily dulled by his dramatically anticlimactic answer.

"What did you think I said, Mom? Gee-eez."

When he uses questionable vocabularial (?!) acquisitions, I'm usually pretty quick to go into full Boring Mom Mode: do you know what that means, is that really what you want to say, respect, blah, blah, blahhh-ahh-ahhh....

But I totally copped out on this one. Because: 1) I didn't really know what this meant; and 2) after the whole Wheat Thins Incident, I wasn't really sure I wanted to get into it.

My husband, the technology buff

Despite all the contagion around here, Jeff managed to have a birthday. We got him a {gasp} digital camera. (A Nikon D-90, if you're a camera nerd like he is.) He was a little reluctant to give up the ol' film, but I forced him.

And now he's cuddling the owner's manual at night and won't quit talking about his new camera. He's all like, "Do you know how awesome this is?!" and I'm all like, "Um, yeah, honey, there's a reason you're the last person in the lower 48 to get one of these things."

He's all about the nature photography. He's taken exactly 29172650 photographs of leaves, trees, twigs, sunrises, acorns, bird poop, ponds, sunsets, insects, branches, clouds, and dead grass. (Okay, I'm joking about the bird poop. But not about the other stuff.)

And, I'll admit, they're pretty:

But I can only look at maybe 764 of those before I get a little bored. To redeem himself, though, he's been taking the kids on his photography hikes. So I have a whole bunch (like 200, without even exaggerating) of pictures like this:

And this:

And this:

I think next I'll introduce him to the internet. That'll really blow his mind.

When creme brulee goes bad

Having survived Halloween and CNN's totally stupid holographic coverage of the election, I can get back to writing about significant, news-worthy issues. Like vomit.

I cannot stand throw-up. It makes me limp and quivery. With division of labor, I'm the poop-parent, and Jeff's the puke-parent. He takes care of any mess that comes out the top end, and I take care of the bottom-end disasters.

Most of the time.

Sunday night, we were safely tucked into bed and I was peacefully not having nightmares about Sarah Palin being our president, but was awakened by the creepy feeling that someone was watching me.

Jensen was hovering over me. "Mom, my stomach hurts." Great. Evan had been throwing up (so. many. times.) for 24 hours, so this only made sense. And with a silent, decisive nod, he clapped his hand over his mouth, turned and bolted into our bathroom. Then, just as abruptly, he stopped running. And I heard a loud splat.

Jeff (who had also awakened by now) yelled, "Run!!!" So Jensen recommenced running to our toilet to finish the job.

Jeff took him upstairs to clean up, and I just lay in bed and waited for Jeff to return and clean up the carnage. But he didn't come back. For ages.

Finally, because I couldn't stand the stench anymore, I ventured into the bathroom to survey the damage. Jensen had puked creme brulee from Jeff's birthday dinner all over the place. Floor, toilet, walls, bathtub, door: everywhere.

Holy hell.

Creme brulee: heavy cream, egg yolks, sugar. (Definitely not for those with weak coronary-artery constitutions. But sooo good.) It was like cleaning up an oil slick (thankfully, there were no waterfowl in our bathroom, because it would have been an enormous pain to get them cleaned up). I used an entire roll of paper towels, and a lot of chemicals (I had to use something to cut the fat), but I got it done. I weakly made my way into the laundry room, where, to my happy surprise, a mountain of stinking bed linens awaited me. Gawd.

When Jeff had gone upstairs to help Jensen clean up, he found Evan in a dead sleep, entirely encrusted in dried vomit. He had thrown up in his sleep. And then Jensen threw up again. So I was forced to wash out two beds' worth of disgusting sheets. I cannot describe the depth of my disappointment. Between the bathroom and the chunky sheets, it took an hour and a half to clean up.

We threw open the windows, scrubbed grout, and cleaned floors multiple times. After about 36 hours, the nose-hair-singeing, lingering reek of vomit no longer permeated the air and our bathroom floor was no longer slippery and greasy. And while I'm tempted to say we've emerged from the puke-ocalypse, I really don't want to jinx anything.

And I think it's safe to say it'll be a while before I eat creme brulee again.

Joy

I did not vote for Barack Obama because of the color of his skin. I voted for Barack Obama because I am a Democrat, and his ideology most closely matched mine in this election. Because he has a singular blend of superior intellect, insight, and charisma that give him leadership skills this nation sorely needs. Because I believe that "change" means something much deeper than simply putting a different body in the Oval Office. And probably some other reasons, too.

But last night: last night my tears of joy were because of the color of his skin.

Last night my tears of joy were for the millions of people in this nation who have never felt part of the national dialogue, who have been marginalized and disenfranchised and ignored by a country which only occasionally has a painfully honest discussion about race. The people who finally felt like they are valued threads in the fabric of our history, our democracy. People who have been hurt, and whose hurt has left them, and me, feeling powerless. But last night our country banded together to fight the pain.

I am not naive. I do not for a moment believe that this rights all wrongs, real or perceived, or that there will be no more wrongs. Nor do I believe that Obama is any sort of saviour or revolutionary. And of course there is still a nation to be governed, with wars and crises and many dysfuctional groups of various skin colors, various socioeconomic classes, various religious beliefs. The sheen will wear off this humbling election and the very real work will remain.

But last night, the world shifted just a bit.

Late last night I awoke Jensen to tell him that Obama had won. Through a sleepy, satisfied smile he murmured, "America elected its first brown president."

Yes, baby. Yes we did.

Put away the hate

You know what we do today: we choose.

Spirits are running high (myself included). That's great: that's how it should be. Get out there, cheer for your candidate, (more importantly) vote for your candidate, tell the world how you feel. It's become a bit tedious of late, and the campaign has seemed to last far too long, but for the first time I can remember in a presidential election, the air is sizzling. Awesome.

You know what we need to do tomorrow? Put away the hate.

Tomorrow (or tonight, depending on how sleep-deprived you are and how late you can stay up, so you where I fall) we'll know. Tomorrow it will be time to put away the spiteful accusations and underhanded dealings and the ludicrous hyperbole. It won't be easy; lots of things have been said, fires of fear and uncertainty have been stoked relentlessly. It won't necessarily be easy to extinguish those flames, but we really must.

You don't need to abandon your principles. By all means, hold your convictions. I just happen to feel very strongly that we should all hold fairness and respect as part of those convictions. Dissent plays an important role in politics. Unfortunately it's sometimes difficult to negotiate the line between dissent and disrespect. As happens every campaign, negotiation of that line has failed miserably. It's fair to say that "civility" has melted a bit in the heat of campaign rhetoric. Please help me reclaim it.

Today it is our responsibility to vote.

Tomorrow it is our responsibility to give congratulations and respect to the winner, to pour a big bucket of decency on the hateful embers of this long campaign.

He may just be presidential material

Here are a few special Evan moments from the past week:

• On human rights: He drew a picture of a guy on a surfboard. (Surprisingly good detail.) He told me it was a "waterboarder" and that he was wearing a special suit so he didn't get hurt.
• On politics: He has a t-shirt that says "Future President" on the front, a gift from a proud grandparent convinced of great things ahead. He wore it last week. Backwards.
• On self-regulation: I found him plundering his Halloween candy Saturday morning. Told him he really needed to ask before gorging on sugar. He replied, "Well, I was by myself. So I asked myself. And myself said okay."
• On fashion: We ran errands on Saturday. It took several hours. He insisted on wearing white socks on his hands the entire time. We got a few strange looks.
• On bodily integrity: After vomiting for the fourth time the other night, he started crying. Because he was worried that his skeleton might get hurt.

He's a lot of fun to live with. When he's not puking or making us crazy, anyway.

Trick or (cough, sniffle) treat (barf)

We are in the midst of a Week of Pestilence at our house. However, the infectious disease gods smiled on us on Friday, and granted us a 24-hour reprieve from all things febrile, snotty, and vomitous. (I don't care if it's not a word. You know what I mean.) We were able to trick-or-treat with a minimum of tuberculosis-like hacking, so the other parents out with their little non-crusty-nosed-cuties didn't look at us like we were criminals. This is good, since the kids were up at 6:15 Friday morning, jumping on my bed, yelling, "It's Halloween! It's Halloween!!!" We'd have had outright mutiny if they hadn't been able to go.

This is as good a group photo as we could get, and even this involved Grandpa Bill wrestling with Caleb. Calm, smiley, all-together-now-kids photo? Not gonna happen.



And: here it is! The Wall-E costume. It was pretty awesome, and a couple of people told me it was the best costume they saw all night. Which made the roughly 239 hours I spent on it almost worthwhile. In honor of all those hours (and Evan's insistence that he was going to be Wall-E), I'm totally entering this photo in Blurb's Halloween photo contest in the Best Handmade Costume Category:



And here's Jensen, looking creepier than I imagined he could. ("Cute" is soooo passe.... Even though he's still adorable.) (And, I know, the eye make-up's not so great, but he was done holding still. We had to make it quick.) As long as I'm at it, I'm entering this one in the same contest for the Best Photo:

Don't worry, things have returned to their sickly baseline here. After the Halloween break from all things infectious, the kids are back at it. Evan's been throwing up since last night. (And no, it's not from too much candy. I don't think.) Jensen suggested that we just dress them all in fluorescent green and they could go as germs. Which isn't a half-bad idea....

Thanks to Blurb/Parent Bloggers Network for sponsoring the photo contest.