Sound of Music, 1965:
CAPTAIN vonTRAPP: Were you this much trouble at the Abbey?
MARIA: Oh, much more, sir.

Star Wars Episode IV, 1977:
LUKE: You know, that little droid’s going to cause me a lot of trouble.
C-3PO: Oh, he excels at that, sir.

I’m not suggesting that Lucas was inspired by Rodgers and Hammerstein, I’m just pointing out the obvious similarities in the characterization of Maria and R2D2. I mean, he’s pretty much a governess squashed into a droid suit. With less folk guitar. And less, uh, governessing. Pretty much.

AUDREY: [Pointing at the ceramic nativity, newly unpacked and set up on a high shelf out of reach] Mama! [Point. Pointpointpoint.] I wanna see Jesus!

ME: I want to see Jesus, too, baby, but I don’t think tonight’s the night.

AUDREY: [Blink. Point.] Mama? See Jesus?

DANE: Oh, great. Now you’ve made it funny.

AUDREY: [Gives up on Mama.] Daddy? Lift me up. I wanna see Jesus.

–
Oh, all right, that’s probably only funny if you’re an evangelical Christian living in hope of rapture (that’s RAPTURE, as in the second coming of the Christ, not RUPTURE, which is something entirely less pleasant) and also familiar with the phrase “lift up in prayer.” There. Is it funny now that I’ve explained the joke? No? Still not? Hmm. Well, national blog posting month will be over tomorrow and then I’ll stop feeling obligated to put words on the screen every single day, okay? Okay then. Thanks.

Oh, fabulous. Even the New York Times thinks I’m going to be a terrible gift-giver this year. (Note to family: I promise not to give you energy-saving lightbulbs or handmade CD clocks. Or anything made of recycled telephone wire. Though you really may get cloth bags for groceries, or soy candles or organic chocolates or something.)

Dane just told me that he wants to get everyone “green” Christmas gifts this year. Just to solidify our position as the freaky-weird relatives. Because while we’re ALREADY the freaky-weird relatives, he apparently fears others might be encroaching on that territory.

I’m trying to pare down the list of books we’ll be getting for our kids, which is always the hardest part of Christmas shopping. I want all the books. In the world. Just all of them. And while I know we’ll order more in the future, I kind of want them all now. For the kids, I mean. Right. For the kids. Sure.

I’ve been looking for a new diaper bag oh, um, pretty much forever. I haven’t found one yet that’s perfect, and I don’t really want to spend the gazillion or so dollars that diaper bags seem to cost until I find one that’s perfect. And by “perfect,” I do mean I want a bag that looks nothing like a diaper bag, isn’t made of leather (not a huge fan of animal skins) or vinyl (not a fan of phthalates, either), and isn’t too terribly big or heavy—but will fit diapers for two kids, a change of clothes for one, and snacks for all four. It should probably match all of my clothes. And not go out of style in the near future, seeing as I’ll never be able to find another one that meets all that criteria.

I’ve been coveting looking at the Zosephine Seattle bag, and I asked Cara at Urban Baby Runway about it today to see if it really meets all of my crazy lady requirements criteria. Being the responsible retailer that she is, she asked how many diapers I typically carry with me to gauge whether the size would work. Hmm. Diapers. How many. Hmm.

Well, today I left the house with one spit-up cloth, a extra pair of baby pants, and two baby hats in my purse. And zero diapers, for either the baby or the one-year-old.

It was 70 degrees outside today. But had a head-chilling storm suddenly have sprung up out of the crystal-clear Pacific, I would have been ready! (In my defense, one of the hats did match Sadie’s outfit.) And what was the point of the spare pants? If her diaper leaked, was I really going to change the PANTS, but leave the DIAPER? What a plan!

I maybe could be forgiven for the forgetting diapers once, but, um, I never remember them. On Thanksgiving, Dane had to run home to pick up the diapers I had neatly packed in a ziplock and left on the bedroom floor. Because that’s where packed diapers go, apparently.

Or maybe instead of that, they’ll eventually go in a diaper bag. A diaper bag that I could just keep packed all the time so I always have extra diapers (what a concept!). Maybe. If I’m lucky.

And just like that, the weekend’s over.

DANE: Did you want to eat something before bed?
ME: You mean like cookies and ice cream?
DANE: No, I meant like a meal.
ME: Oh. Then… no.

The holiday weekend is half over and so far, we have… we, uh… we’ve accomplished pretty much nothing. But we did visit family (mine yesterday, Dane’s today). And we did eat.

My kids, ever thankful for poultry, watched the turkey being carved at my parents’ house with varying degrees of both interest and horror. At one point. Owen cried out, “It has blood!” But I don’t think it did, much. Anymore.

The kids then proceeded to eat white bread and mashed potatoes, avoid their lentils, and talk the grownups into giving them extra desserts. Sounds about right.

Today we just went to visit, not for a meal, so there was less sitting still and more running and giggling with the cousins. And only one kid threw up, but it was a baby one, so that hardly counts. And it wasn’t even one of mine, believe it or not.

No one rode a scooter in the house. And no trees have fallen on any of my personal belongings. (Yet.) All in all, not a bad Thursday and Friday.

I’m hoping we’ll be up early and somehow full of energy tomorrow so we can do things like Tidy Up the House (ha! ha ha ha… ha…) or Find Some Holiday Decorations or even Figure Out What to Get Everyone For Christmas. Though I bet we’ll just spend the day refereeing squabbles (Dane) and nursing babies (me) and preparing meals and all that other regular daily stuff that manages to take up all the time there is, every day, forever. Sigh.

May you be blessed with such abundance that your heart overflows with thanks.

Happy Thanksgiving.

(See, I could totally write greeting cards.)

Hey, guess what. It’s almost Thanksgiving. (Or Thanksgiving was three days ago by the time you read this, but whatever.) Today I sat the kids down to make a Thankfulness Craft, because why not commemorate our annual thankfulness with construction paper, right? Right.

So I gave each kid three pieces of paper in assorted colors, along with markers and crayons and pencils and whatnot. The idea was to draw things they were thankful for, and then we’d assemble them into a book. But to keep the showing of toys to a minimum, I told them that one page was for Something You Can Hold, one page was for Something You Can’t Hold, and one page was for Something Alive.

I was careful not to offer suggestions—in order not to influence the creative and thankful processes, of course—but certainly I imagined Mommy might be making an appearance on the Something Alive pages. Or maybe they’d draw Sadie, or our whole family. I could caption the drawings “We’re thankful for each other,” or something equally sappy.

Well, the anti-sentimental among us need not despair. Not one human appears in our thankfulness book. Right now it looks like this:

Title page: “Our Thankfulness Book, by Abigail, Owen, and Audrey.”

Audrey’s page: Abstract art, with the caption “Audrey is thankful.”

Owen’s Something Alive page: A turkey. Owen is thankful for poultry.
Owen’s Something You Can Hold page: Another turkey. Owen is very, very thankful for poultry. Though obviously he’s never been close enough to a bird to try to pick one up.
Owen’s Something You Can’t Hold page: God. Who made the turkeys.

Abigail’s Something Alive page: A turkey. Have I mentioned we’re vegetarian? They’re not even going to eat turkey. Nor have they ever seen a turkey. I don’t even think we have any books featuring turkeys.
Abigail’s Something You Can Hold page: A bouncy ball. Apparently I didn’t need to worry so much about their being overly thankful for material objects; this is the only one of the bunch. Though I didn’t predict the turkeys, which just goes to show that Mama Doesn’t Know Everything. Please don’t tell my kids.
Abigail’s Something You Can’t Hold page: Christmas. By which time I hope there will be less turkeys in the crafts.