The Santa Situation and Other Holiday Nuggets

It snowed Christmas Eve and the day before, (about 8" total) giving us a perfectly timed white Christmas.

Rhys, Bella, and I geared up for a Christmas Eve day stomp in the snow - no small task. Have you tried to put mittens on a fussy 18 mo. old lately?

Our great friends the Moon's and Van Der Bosh's joined us for a Christmas Eve feast of roast beast. Our three families combined for seven boys and one little girl, sweet Lucy Moon, all age 4 or under. Let's quickly do the math....hmm, oh, yes, it equals chaos. Buzzed on Christmas candy and electrified by the pending arrival of the Fat Man, the biggest of the small ones, Kelly, Willem, and Jack, frenetically tore the house apart, somehow avoiding injury during hours of roughhousing. Cocktails were consumed by all over the age of 4, certainly an ancient parental survival mechanism.

Cast in the role of Old St. Nick for my second year with the same group of mostly nice little boys and girl, before roast beast and after a few beers to perk my jolly-old-soul, I slipped away to Grandma Mary's house and changed into my Fat Man suit. The costume is deluxe complete with white beard and wig; fur trimmed hat, coat and nickers; round spectacles; and topped off by a well placed pillow around my middle, of course. I barley recognized myself.

Sack of Christmas gifts, straight from points north in hand, I rang the doorbell and gave my best "Ho, ho, ho!" The kids had been warned of Santa's arrival and I heard squeals and the pounding of running little feet from the other side of the door. I made my big entrance, greeting eight, wee, beaming faces with another ho, ho, ho and boomed, "Merry Christmas" for good measure. As a courtesy, I greeted the mostly naughty group of half-drunk parents and began my serious business: giving the first gift of Christmas to all the good little children. Randomly, I drew out Kelly's present first. He approached me with an appraising look, not smiling, quickly snatched his gift, and retreated out of my site line, screaming and crying. I doled out my bag of goodies to the other kids, staying in character and using my best baritone Santa voice to quiz the kids on their status: naughty or nice. All the while, Kelly was still freaking out. Catherine, wide-eyed, through clenched teeth, hissed, "You need to leave now. Kelly is freaking out because you're Santa." Kelly made me! He's only three. What?

Apparently, Kelly figured out, almost immediately, I was behind the beard and flipped out not wanting me to be Santa. Catherine, after realizing that Kelly had dissected the whole Santa charade, told him that Daddy was just pretending and that the real Santa would, in fact, visit our house later and bring him presents. He finally stopped crying 45 minutes later when, in a act of parental desperation, we stuck a candy cane in his mouth.

Due to the emotional trauma suffered by myself and eldest son, I would like to officially and publicly announce my retirement as one Christopher R. Kringle.

After spending the morning opening presents, Kelly put on his new fleece jacket and sunglasses and hiked a few blocks to our little neighborhood park. The snow was too cold and light to make a snowman, so we just flung handfuls in the air and rolled round in the powder. Despite the torments on Christmas Eve, dressed in his red Christmas pj's, Kelly had a joy-filled Christmas playing gracefully with his mountains of new toys and his loving, little brother.

The photo below of Rhys with blue ink on his face was the result of Kelly's unsupervised attempt to make Rhys look like a "Kitty Cat."

Beckett played the part of Christmas elf in his festive jumpers.

Christmas Cookies

Beckett can't help it, he was just born cute.

















Kelly showing off his new gears to Dariana.
For a video of the gears turning, go to:
http://gallery.me.com/tfkdenver#gallery

Pebe reading to Kelly and Cath via recordable book. Kelly listen to his grand ma read The Night before Christmas about 16 times before bed.

Tree Topper, Tree Tropper, Tree Topper

We finally bought a fine fur tree and trimmed her with our collection of heirloom ornaments: sparkling glass balls, handmade gems from our youth, silver bells, and a traditional fat-lipped fish with a lady face. Rhys just learned to kiss, lovingly puckering his moist maw for most any occasion, even if you only ask for a hug. Unable to resist a pair of perfectly kissable lips, Rhys made out with the lady fish for a while, then we hung her high out of reach of her little lover boy.

As Doodie peered down from atop the soup, judging our actions naughty or nice, Kelly and I pretended to be Christmas Trees, balancing the Santa tree topper on our head just for the fun. I finished our trim job by placing the Santa, needlepointed with love by my mom in 1980 and bequeathed to me last Christmas, on top of our fancy, fat spruce.

We trimmed the tree last Sunday. Since then (it's now Friday) we've hosted three holiday parties at our house. Grandma Mary came in for a quick pre-Xmas visit with the boys. We planned to take her out for a nice hot meal, but ordered in Little India - too pooped to rally for a an evening out and away from Crew KRB. Catherine has been asleep on the couch before 8pm most nights this week.

Did you see the photo of Beckett? He's getting cuter and balder.

Big Christmas Box and the Tiny Tree

So, we finally mustered up a focused fifteen minutes and fished the boxes stuffed with Christmas chachkies out of the crawler. We decided not to free the dusty fake poinsettias from their clear plastic coffin, but we unboxed the musical snowball to the delight of Kelly and Rhys. Santa and his petite team of just three reindeer must have circumnavigated the glass globe at least one hundred times before the boys grew tired of watching. When the blizzard inside the orb waned to a flurry, Kelly would reminded me to turn it over by prodding, "More nieve (snow in Spanish)."

Rhys loves do anything with me, but especially if he's sitting perfectly in my lap, just so. He'll read a library of books, watch a few minutes of a ballgame, or eat really anything perched in the sweet spot of my lap. If he slips down just an inch or if I need to shift him this way or that, he can lose his marbles lickety-spit...and drool. He's a big lover and hugger. Two of his favorite books involve hugging. One picture book called Hug is about a baby chimp who needs a hug. The only word in the book is "hug" and Rhys lights up each time the word is read and leans his head toward my chest, giving me a little snuggle. At the end of the story the little lost chimp, Bobo, finds his Mommy and gets a big hug. Rhys always laughs and grins when I give him a big hug, too.



Today, Catherine took the big ones to a birthday party at Monkey Business while I stayed back at base (gladly) with Beckett. I hadn't had a day alone with him in a while. It was a joyous, relaxing few hours together. After his morning bottle and before his morning nap, I gave him a proper bath. My only regret today was not running for a camera and doing a Pebe style photo shoot. Beckett kicked, splashed, and smiled while I shampooed his thinning baby hair and de-cheesed his neck folds.

For more photos of today's adventures around the house, go here: http://gallery.me.com/tfkdenver

Did you notice the foot-long strand of drool tailing out of Rhys' mouth in the photo above?

Doodie is Watching

Elf on a shelf, Santa's "spy elf" used to control children's behavior around Christmas time. A brilliantly simple idea for manipulating children that's essentially just a little bit of red cloth with a kind of creepy head attached. With the help of it's accomplice adult, the elf is placed up on its perch to observe kids all day long. "Kelly, let's just stop the whining right now. Doodie is watching." Allegedly, the elf makes nightly magical flights back to points north to file "naughty or nice" reports with El Gordo Rojo. I don't personally believe a word of this nonsense, but Kelly seems to change his tune when reminded of Doodie's duty.

Elf on a shelf instruction #1: Name the elf. Kelly named him Doodie, of course. Instruction #2: Do not touch Doodie - the exact same instruction #2 for potty training! As you can see from the photo, Doodie's elf hat (all elves sport a festive, pointy lid) was removed by one Kelly Goodwillie before mom had a chance to read and absorb the importance of rule #2. With luck, this supervisory error will not transfer to potty training.

The other neat Elf on a shelf trick is kids are instructed to tell their elf what they want for Christmas. I asked Kelly to tell Doodie what he wanted for Christmas. Kelly said, "Cars..... and.... a.....baby doll!" He already owns over 60 cars, the match box variety, and one talking baby doll. He jogged into the playroom to retrieve his doll for me to see. On his return Kelly pointed out the fact that the baby was in a basket and mumbled something about changing his stinky diaper. The doll's given name is, yes, "Dukey." Doodie and Duky are quite the pair.