God grant me the serenity
to accept the fact that my kids are going to drive me crazy during the winter break;
courage to actually get out of bed each morning ;
and wisdom to know the urge to book a one-way flight to Barbados will pass.

Eventually.

According to the Daily Beast, anyway…

At the top were names such as Louis Bardo, Marcello Daniel, and Cosima.  All right, I’m down with those.  But Billie Beatrice? Amadeus Benedict Edley Luis? Nelly May Lois?  I’m sorry, but I am so not feeling them.  For some reason, I don’t like when girls are named boy names. I know, I’m an old fogey and anti-feminist, but I just think that when I see a name on a piece of paper, I should know if it is a boy or girl.  Feel free to flog me publicly.  Don’t get me started on the Amadeus one, which the site praises for it’s mix of “style, ethnicities, and eras.” Do they not know people are going to follow him around on the playground singing the refrain to a rather bad but unforgettable 80’s pop song? And Nelly May Lois sounds like someone who spends most of her time being mean to people at a bingo parlor.

At the bottom were gems like  Buddy Bear Maurice, Sundance Thomas, and Draco.  Jamie Oliver (who is currently winning his CDF round) is perpetrator of the Ursa major, and Draco comes courtesy of one former Ms. Winnie Cooper.  I’m not totally up in arms about Draco, though.  At least it’s a literary name, not one that’s made up.  They also slammed Vera Farmiga about her choice of name, which was an ethnic Lithuanian one.  I’m not cool with making fun of names from other cultures, so I take issue with that one.

It’s a hectic week my friends, so posting this week? Totally on the light and fluffy side… Hope you don’t mind.

Oh, the majority of you break my heart when 44% say that Santa photos are NEVER cute. NEVER?! Have you ever seen the ones with my kids? Adorable, I tell you! 29% think that kids should be done with Santa by middle school, and 23% of you are suckers for a pic at any age.  I think by middle school kids should really have nothing to do with Santa pictures.  Anything after that is a little bit creepy.

But today I want to talk gifts.  Well, actually about how you wrap them.

Getting kicked to the curb yet again was poor Conan O’Brien.  Dude can’t catch a break, can he?  But in other news, that means Neil Patrick Harris has won enough CDF’s to propel him to the Hall of Fame, where he shall frolic henceforth with the likes of Jason Bateman and Jon Stewart.  Lucky guy.

So we’ve got two brand new contestants to start off the week before Christmas, and I love you all, but I’m not posting anything on Christmas, so there will be an extended voting period.  

Let’s get to it!

VERSUS

I’m only telling you this because we are such good friends.   And also because if you think Child Services should be called, you don’t know where I live.

I was on the phone with my mother when I noticed the Munchkinette sidling up to the front of the Christmas tree.  Now this puts her between the tree and the middle front window, so between being on the phone and a dicey sightline, I don’t see what happens next.  Until, of course, it’s too late.

And what happens next is that I see her proudly holding a glass Christmas ornament in her little hand.

I give out yell because I’m thinking she’s going to drop it. I begin running toward her.  Er, well, probably lurching is a better term for it.

She does me one better.

In one of those slo-mo effects in the movies, I watch as she crushes the ornament in her hand.

At this point, I let out a full blown scream because I’m envisioning myself in the ER with her thrashing around as they stitch up the million cuts in her hand.  Also, I’m a little pissed because it’s one of the intricate ones handed down to me from the 1950’s and I’m wondering why she couldn’t have chosen a regular old ball.

So I’m continuing the lurch and watching what seems like hundreds of little glass pieces scatter around her, which I finally crunch through and grab her.

I frantically seize her tiny hand, fully expecting shards to be stuck in it and blood dripping down her arm.

Nothing.  Not a scratch.

No aftermath of any kind except for me losing a very cool ornament and having to thoroughly vacuum. 

We’re thinking of having her pick out our lottery numbers.

My son is smart.  Really smart.

There, I said it.  Sue me.

And it isn’t just my opinion.  As he gets older and begins taking state tests and computerized reading comprehension tests and the like, it is quite obvious that it isn’t all in my head.  And trust me, most of his teachers have initially heard my characterizations of him at the beginning of the school year with thinly veiled skepticism. Don’t get me wrong, he is no prodigy who is going to graduate from college at age 12. But he is smarter than your average bear. He’s finally at the grade level where he can be referred to the Gifted and Talented program, and I can’t wait for him to start.

Because if there is one thing that other parents cannot stand, is when someone else’s child is smarter than theirs.  In fact, they can take it quite personally.  Witness all the ill-intentioned bumper stickers that stated, “My kid can kick your honor student’s ass” in response to the honor roll stickers that used to be rather ubiquitous, at least in my neck of the woods.

Why would anyone dream of that being appropriate?

If someone has a child who is extremely talented in violin, or baseball, or dance, they have absolutely no qualms about telling any and everyone.  I am often regaled as to how little Jillian is dancing a solo at her competition, or how young Aiden can hit a home run practically every game.  And everyone smiles and congratulates and says how wonderful that must be.

But when it comes to academics, if you have a very intelligent child, and you mention in passing that he reads at an 8th grade level in 2nd grade, you are actually seen as putting other kids down.  Somehow, you are insulting the intelligence of their children if yours happens to outshine them in the academics department.   Never mind that my son doesn’t really care about sports, can’t play an instrument to save his life at this point, nor can he do anything other than some sort of psuedo break-dancing moves that he made up in his head.  There are children in his class who can do these things much better than he can, and more, but because he can take a standardized test and ace it, I have to whisper his accomplishments only to my family and a few really good friends.

Well, I’m tired of trying to dance around the insecurities of everyone else.  I’m not going to go out of my way to brag, but I’m no longer going to play down my son and his impressive accomplishments in the classroom as I have in the past.

When I hear about the skills and talents of other children, I am genuinely happy for them.  Is it wrong for me to expect the same?

The other day some friends of ours had a “private” Santa party, one where the kids could sit and take pictures with Santa and chat with him for however long they liked.

My husband wanted to go, but our daughter did not cooperate with a nap, thus ensuring that venturing out of the house at the specified time of the evening would result in a spectacular tantrum of epic proportions. Besides, I told my husband, why go through all the trouble when our son is a non-believer?

That’s right, my eight year old does not believe in Santa Claus, and actually hasn’t since kindergarten.

You see, I blame his aunt.

Auntie always has an Easter egg hunt at her house, and one day a few years back he was in her garage and recognized the eggs. He then asked my husband and me if there really was an Easter Bunny, seeing as how he found it odd the Easter Bunny would use Auntie’s garage for a storage facility.

I have always maintained that I will NOT lie to my children, especially when asked a question point-blank. I did caution my son about the answer, asking him if he really wanted to know, and once he knew, there was no un-knowing. If you know what I mean.

He said he wanted the truth.

So I told him the truth. No Easter Bunny. From there, it wasn’t hard for him to extrapolate every other holiday figure as being imaginary as well, right down to the Tooth Fairy.

And you know what? I don’t regret what I did one bit.

My husband still thinks I shouldn’t have done it, and my neighbor across the street claims that her eleven year old still believes in Santa, and that she will never tell him otherwise.

But my son is an analyst, a deductive thinker who was already headed down the path of jadedness long before I ever intervened.  This is the same son, who, when sent to a religious pre-school made this complaint, “Mom, all we ever do is pray! We pray at snack, we pray at chapel.  An ambulance goes by, and what do we do? PRAY! Does God even have time to listen to all that praying? I would think he doesn’t care about us praying about our lunch.” 

So really, it was only a matter of time before my budding atheist figured it out for himself.

And as for those parents who maintain that their fifth-grader still believes in Santa, I know it’s hard, but you need to let that go.  Like, now.

16% of you say that taking children to Hooters Restaurant is not a big deal.  Apparently boobs are just boobs.  However, technically the majority is against, with 21% stating and unequivocal “no” and 45% stating a wishy-washy “no, but I can’t stop anybody else.”  Be judgemental people, it’s the American way!  As for me, I will never take a step with either my son or daughter into Hooters, which is a place that will teach them in no uncertain terms to objectify women, which is a lesson neither one of them should be learning.

Today I’m all about the holiday season and that annual favorite, the Santa photo.  And yes, I’ve already featured a Santa photo on another post, but one can never quite get enough Santa photos, in my opinion.