It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like... Plastic

It's done. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be-- a little worse than ripping off a Band-Aid, but not as bad as an assault by a predatory smoke detector. It's our tree-in-a-box and I think about Justin Timberlake every single time I walk past it.






The Beans approve, Hubby's satisfied and Biscuit didn't even realize that it was artificial from three inches away.











I have to admit, it was ridiculously easy to set up once Hubby put the right section in the right place ("Why doesn't this fit? You might have to take it back, Pie. This piece is the wrong size!!!"). Ha ha ha.





That would have been too bad because the odds of me taking any item back to that store and attempting to solve another problem within the confines of that particular retail establishment are, in a single word, nil. In fact, I may have to avoid the store for the remainder of my days here on earth. Maybe even the one-block radius surrounding the store. While giving in to my practical side and going for plastic over pine wasn't too terrible, the actual experience ending in this purchase (well, actually the loading which came after the purchase) will go down in my personal shopping history as one of the worst in my entire life. Sorry to disappoint, but each time I've tried to impart the story my heart starts pounding, my head starts throbbing, my right eye begins twitching and the knot in my back that never really goes away tenses up so severely that I need a time-out and sometimes even a drink. Suffice it to say, sometimes people can make a very, very simple task impossibly difficult and the tree-purchasing experience was one of those times. A word of advice: don't take fifteen-month-old twins by yourself to the hardware store to buy a fake Christmas tree unless you have a decent stash of Valium waiting at home along with someone capable of watching the kids for a couple of days while you recover. Because you will not be able to find an English-speaking cashier at the store whom your kids will not bark at like a couple of excited dogs. And no, Ma'am, "Dunhill" is NOT spelled "n-o-b-l-e". In the end, we got a great deal, the tree looks great, all the kids are happy and that's enough of that.

This is going to be an interesting season. I don't have cards out yet. Hubby vetoed the few I tried to whiz by him because none of the photos include any of us in holiday garb. Quite frankly I don't think it matters but hey, what do I know? I'm just the mom. It's just as well, though. His insistence will very likely yield very cute pictures to paste all over the cards and I will get all the credit. Not a bad deal, right?

Just like everyone else, it seems, we're scaling back on the holiday budget this year. There are several things that I picked up throughout the year because they were just too great to pass up, but we're definitely not going overboard. And it's interesting because even though we suffered through the housing debacle this year, we aren't doing too badly. There's just so much that's different this year from last and the adjustments are huge.

I started to want to feel bad about it-- about scaling back. But then I got to thinking about it and the greatest things we have to remember years past aren't at all about the things we got but rather about what made the holidays that year distinctive: Hubby's first Christmas with the family at Mimzi and DPSM's house, Hubby's, Biscuit's and my first Christmas together in our own place after living with my parents for soooooo long, the New Year's when Biscuit accidentally spit sparkling cider in my face, the New Year's we got to spend with Auntie D and YD... All the stuff we've bought, particularly for Biscuit, is pretty much gone having been outgrown, broken, given away or lost.

So I've decided not to feel badly in the least. Instead I'll be grateful that Hubby has a great job, that we have a warm, safe home and that we'll have family gathered around the table for a Christmas ham that I hopefully won't drop on the floor.

All that and a plastic tree. Ho ho ho!!! I wonder if I can find a plastic partridge?

Faking It

When I was growing up, my parents had a fake Christmas tree. Every single year they brought that tired thing out and set it up in the same spot in the living room and every year it seemed smaller and more miserable. I can barely remember my mom picking me up in front of the tree when it was new with a can of flocking spray in my little hands, and Mimzi's voice in my ear telling me to push the button just a little bit harder. I pushed that button as hard as my teeny-tiny little fingers could, the can trembling in my hands from the effort, and a glob of gooey white mess droobled onto a plastic tree branch and I was never so proud as I was at that moment. It was my first time flocking anything.

Fast forward to four years ago (yeah, that's weird-- moving forward into the past, isn't it?) to Booie's, Biscuit's and my first Christmas together in our own place and our passionately anti-fake-tree conversation. We were all in complete agreement that fake Christmas trees are unAmerican, unGodly, unChristmasy, and overall doubleplus unGood. Happy to have the matter settled, we eventually hauled ourselves to a tree lot, then another and another, and finally in exasperated defeat dropped about a hundred bucks on the least miserable, least forlorn and neglected-looking Douglas Fir we could find.

We were good little Christmas-tree parents, leaving it outside for an hour, shaking off all the needles before bringing it inside, putting a penny in the base, making him all nice and festive for the holiday and watering him twice every day. But apparently all of this was not good enough for him because he turned almost totally brown and dropped all his needles in the week leading up to Christmas and, since he was in the living room at the front of the house, most of those needles were tracked all through the house and I was still finding the suckers when we moved out the following May.

Undeterred the following year, we passionately declared that a few measly old pine needles wouldn't make Scrooges out of us so off we went again for a real tree. This time it was a seven-foot-tall White Fir-- unusual and very Seussy-- that caught our eyes. It sang to us and we brought him home, wrapped him top-to-bottom in lights, all the way up the trunk and all over the branches, and stuck him proudly in our new living room window. Our overexuberant lighting style totally overpowered the tree (seriously, from the street it just looked like seven hundred billion lights roughly arranged into an upside-down cone shape that was probably visible from the planet Pluto) but we loved him nonetheless. He held all his needles and sheltered the presents, even holding a few on his branches and we declared that we'd always have a White Fir for every Christmas yet to come. When it was time to say goodbye, he was kind enough to leave the unexpected gift of sap all over the hardwood floors, which required an incredible amount of time, energy and effort to remove.

The next year, we returned to the same Christmas tree farm with only a mildly tart (and still sticky) taste in the backs of our mouths, willing to give the White Fir another go only to discover that demand for them was so low that they no longer offered them. Bummed out that we'd not enjoy our quirky Seuss-like tree again, we walked around and around, finally settling for a Noble that was too bushy in some places and not bushy enough in others. We brought him home (he almost slid off of Putt-Putt twice and Hubby's never driven as slowly as he did that ride home), did the tap-tap on the porch, which left a disappointing mound of needles in that spot, much to our dismay, gingerly carried it inside (whispering sweet nothings to it all the while) and watched as, within ten days, its branches drooped-- every single one of them like a super-sad, upside-down happyface mouth-- and dropped about eighty percent of its needles which the two busy dogs promptly scattered all over the house-- upstairs, downstairs, under the beds, in the closets, the garage, the back yard and both cars. Still enough needles remained that it passed for a ragamuffin little Christmas tree but the thing was dry as the Hollywood hills in July so we didn't dare plug in the lights or even look at it for too long out of fear that it would spontaneously combust and burn the house down. Obviously, that tree didn't want to share the holiday with us, either.

Then I started feeling very tired. Four days after Christmas we discovered that I was pregnant and my energy level crashed and nausea levels rose accordingly. The tree died an unceremonious death in the living room, still bedecked in lights and ornaments in early February, its branches all stiffly dried in their please-return-us-to-the-earth-from-which-we-sprung posture. And I just didn't care. I finally got Mimzi to come out to the house with me one day while Hubby was in Boston. Mimzi supervised while I, in all my sloppy, clumsy, pregnant glory climbed the stepladder to remove the ornaments and lights, ate a sandwich (and a bowl of soup and a plate of spaghetti), and eventually hauled the thing out to the sideyard where it stayed until Hubby had a fabulous time cutting it up with a Sawz-All and piecing it out in the recyclables can over the span of a couple of months. As far as I'm concerned, it was a fitting end to that bastard of a tree. And again I swept and swept and swept and still found more pine needles, although this time it became harder to see them as my belly grew and grew.

Last year, our first with the Beans, Hubby and I scooted out to the farm, grabbed a tree that didn't piss us off too badly, threw it on the car and were home within an hour. We brought it inside and watered it every now and again when we remembered, made sure none of the ornaments had fallen victim to Katie's mischief (she really does try so hard to be good) and took it down the weekend following New Year's and left it out at the curb for the Boy Scouts with a donation.

And the next day I started thinking about the merits of a fake Christmas tree.

Last year we got away with so much. The Beans weren't even sitting up and didn't have a clue they could get around all by themselves. This year, EVERYTHING goes into their mouths-- and neither one is afraid of using her teeth on every square millimeter of anything she can get her hands on. Our last house was all hardwoods except for the closets and the guest room-- here carpet is the exception and not the norm and I'll know I'm on something I shouldn't quit if I can convince myself that I won't have to vaccuum every single day of my life from now until May if we get a real tree. There are a TON more cracks to gather tree needles (and yes, I am referring to Bean cracks as well as all other bodily orifices) and I can't erase the image of the howling fantods that will ensue when I glance down at a dirty diaper and discover needles there too, of all places.


Like all the changes in our lives that have come aong with the Beans, I'm sure we'll find a way to embrace this one too. No, we don't have a fake plastic, gloopily-flocked tree in our living room yet, but it's just a matter of time. I guess it's a growing-up-into-your-responsibilities thing. And another thing that goes along with that is the realization that the reason for the flocking fake tree I hated so much as a kid was none other than yours truly.

But I still don't have to be happy about it. I refuse. No flocking way.

Little Linus

Parki loves the Binkie. She always has. She is just a Binking kind of Bean. We keep at least five in rotation, like we have today, and when the Beans go down for Happy Nappy or Night-Night, as long as Parki has one in her mouth and one in each fist, then off to sleep she goes. She doesn't Bink all the time-- she just wants to know they're there just in case the Binking mood strikes her. And frequently, she'll spit one out and replace it with the one in her right hand, pick up the one she rejected, spit out the new one, and replace it with the one in her left hand. By morning, all the Binkies usually litter the floor around and under the Beans' cribs and she and Pipsi walk around gathering them to scatter all over the house for me to frantically search for immediately prior to that morning's Happy Nappy. Parki seems to end up with the lion's share because now that the Beans' hands are getting bigger it's easy for her to pop one in her mouth and carry two or three in each hand. There have been times when we've had as many as seven Binkies in the Beans' room at a time. Sometimes one gets left behind in the carseat or stroller and having extra just makes it easier to keep them happy.

Since you're perceptive, you've already said to yourself, "Wait-- five Binkies means that Pipsi only has two. That's not fair!" You're right. We'll momentarily set aside the fact that I don't care that it isn't fair because there's a very good reason Pipsi only usually has two Binkies in her crib. Pipsi doesn't even really need one Binkie. She doesn't need Dolly, she doesn't need Panda, Stick Frog, Fairy Purse, Pink Car or the always-contested, battle-sparking Pink Shoes.

But she must have Soft Blanket. Pippers is a big, big fan of Soft Blanket. Lately she won't go ANYWHERE without a Soft Blanket. She drags one around with her up and down the hall, through the kitchen, into the family room, along on trips Bye-Bye in the Starship Margaret, Bye-Bye in Big Red, and back into my lap for a story. She finds them useful for games of Peek-A-Boo or Where's Pipsi, a game she invented where she pulls Soft Blanket over her head and I say, "Where's Pipsi?" while she takes tiny steps around until she bumps into something and falls down, giggling like a loony tune the whole time. There are a total of eight acceptable candidates for Soft Blanket (we've only bought two-- the rest were all gifts and thank you all SO MUCH!) and right this moment, four of them are in the dryer because Pipsi must now have them in her high chair with her while she enjoys whichever meal's before her. Soft Blanket enjoys these meals too because Soft Blanket's main function is to softly cradle Pipsi's face and head when she plops down on it while softly saying, "Ahhhhhhhh,". Soft Blanket always obliges and Pipsi shows her appreciation by occasionally slobbering the contents of her mouth onto Soft Blanket. When we're all playing together in the Beans' room, Pipsi piles every blanket she can grab on one spot of the floor and faceplants right on top of it, rolling around and wrapping herself in all their Soft Blankety Softness. And sometimes she'll reach for one and I'll hand it to her. She'll look at it and fuss a little more, telling me, "No, not this one, the other one!", and we'll find the other one and she'll push it onto my shoulder and throw herself into my lap. So happy!

Hubby says it's good that we have so many Soft Blankets and Binkies. He's pretty smart like that. He quickly and easily recognizes that Binkies and Blankies are simple things that make the Beans very, very happy and when they're happy, we're happy. We've learned that it's important to see eye-to-eye while raising twins and a middle-schooler; there are three of them and only two of us and they can smell opportunity like sharks can smell blood in the water.

So imagine my surprise last weekend when, as we were enjoying a leisurely stroll downtown and I raced to the window of my favorite consignment shop to scrutinize the handbags in the window, he asked me, "How many purses do you need?"

That's crazy! How many purses do I need?!? That's like asking how many Binkies or Blankies we need!!!! Hubby, you can very quickly and easily determine the answer to that by a brief study of my daughters. The answer is:

One. And that one happens to be whichever one makes me happy at the moment.

She Sticks Her Hand Where?

Little kids are obsessed with touching stuff. All kinds of stuff. They touch it with their little fingers, palms, feet, and mouths, much to their parents' frequent chagrin. Our little Beans are no exception.



As I've said before, Pooki and Pipsi are very different from one another and as they've grown and their personalites are becoming even more clearly defined, I see little Pipsi sharing a lot of similarities with Biscuit's younger self. Like her big brother, Pipsi will pause at the word "no" and retract her hand from whatever she's touching even if the word isn't directed at her. She's a little more cautious about everything and definitely wary of strangers, just like litle Biscuit was. Parki is not.



To Parki, "no" means that whatever has her attention is even more interesting than she first thought and definitely needs her hands on it and she needs to take it away from everyone else and spend some good one-on-one time with it, examining it in fine detail, evaluating its every characteristic, slobbering on it. Recently, she discovered a fascinating North-South-running crack in her backside that lives under her diaper. And she can't get enough of it. The first time she found it I thought it made a cute picture.



"Parki, did you find your bum? That's where the poop lives, Bean. Let's keep hands out of there. That's yucky," I said, tossing toys into the corner of the Beans' room in a Ten-Second-Tidy that the Beans admirably destroyed with the Five-Second-Franticthrowitallaround. In my frazzled state I made the grossest possible error I could have made.



"No, no, Parki, don't put your hands in there." And that was it. I was doomed the second I said it. I looked over at Pipsi, reassuring her that the "no" wasn't meant for her and it was okay to point at the pictures of butterflies with her middle finger and scream, "Beeeeeeeeeeeezzzzzzzz!" and I pretended not to notice Parki, who was looking at me with the brightest, most shiny, gleefully mischievous smile you've ever seen as she shoved her hand down the back of her diaper as far as it would go and turned and ran out the door to the hall.



Sigh.



At that moment, I made a mental note to myself to dress Parki exclusively in snap-bottom tops to nip that fetish in the bud. Then my crazily-hormonal post-pregnancy sleep-deprived brain must have deleted it.



A couple of days later the three of us were again playing in the Beans' room when I thought I noticed a funny smell. I grabbed the nearest Bean (Pipsi) for a smell check (negative) and went out in the hall in search of the probable offender. I found her at the end of the hall in the corner against the closet door with her hand down the back of her pants and that winning smile pasted broadly across her bright, beautiful little face.



Parki had hit paydirt.



Oh, no. I stopped dead in my tracks and paused to make sure my neutral-smile-poker-face was firmly in place. Check. Proceed-- act natural. Don't spook her. Approach slowly. Try a distraction. I bet you wish you had that helpful little voice in your head telling you what to do sometimes!



"Hi Parki! Where's your Binkie?" I asked, looking around on the floor and advancing toward my stinky little Bean.



"Bah? Whassit?" Parki asked back, looking around and pulling her hand out of her pants to make the broad, open-handed gesture the Beans do when asking where something is.



"I don't know," I said and, reaching down, gently grasped a fetid, brown-fingered Beanpaw, squishing down the howling fantods welling up inside and going into crisis-suppression mode.



"Come on, Parki, let's go wash hands!"



"Yaaah!" Parki squealed in agreement.



The Beans LOVE washing hands. They love water in any form, to be truthful, but today's story isn't about that as you well know.



With the offending hand firmly under control we proceeded to the sink, washed off the foul matter, returned to change her diaper and resumed playtime. I didn't bother changing Parki into a onesie because after all, she'd already enjoyed a massive emptying of her bowels and why make more laundry and therefore more work for myself? Mission successful: crisis averted. Congratulations Secret Agent Mom.



I was quite please with myself. Not as pleased as Parki was with her discovery of PantsTreasure, but still pleased. A little too pleased. Pleased to the point of complacency. Pleased to the point of hubristic. And that was bad-- very, very bad.



I think anytime people live together and become accustomed to each others' habits, it's easy to assume that these people will always maintain the same habits and patterns. It's easy to forget how unpredictable people can be. Even little people and their little bowels, which can hold more than one might think.



That evening we were eating dinner. Hubby, Biscuit and I were on the family room sofa and the Beans were happily occupying themselves and each other in the Little PlayZone, occasionally grazing off our plates and returning to play. Suddenly the MomAlarm bells went off because Parki was standing over in the corner, her hand down the back of her pants. This in and of itself wouldn't have been a big deal, but she had that little devilish grin on her face again.



And she was staring right at me.



"Parki? Did you poop your pants?" I asked, quickly clattering my dinner plate on the coffee table.

Out popped her hand and, you guessed it-- it was covered in poop. Again.

"Yeeeee!" Parki squealed, looking over at Pipsi with a gleam in her eye. In the instant between that moment and my arrival at her corner to swoop her up and prevent the havoc she was undoubtedly ready to wreak on her sister, a scene of Parki grabbing a handful of Pipsi's hair in her little brown fist flashed before my eyes. I imagined the ensuing moments: Hubby and Biscuit, vomiting all over the sofa, table, and family-room carpet, splashing some onto the Beans' toys for good measure and me, standing in the midst of all that pooke (yes, it's a new kind of matter created by the fusion of poop and puke), my arms full of screaming, poop-coated Beans, not knowing where to begin the cleanup.

Again, we were lucky and escaped without much of an incident. We cleaned up in the kitchen and eventually returned to our previous pursuits, although my appetite was greatly diminished after exposure to the contents of Parki's diaper (where does it all come from???). For the past several days, Parki has worn either full body jumpers or bottom-snap shirts and I have to watch both Beans at all times.

But what this has got me thinking about is a diaperless life for the Beans. We're getting to that point already! If she knows there's something in there then that's a great indication that she's getting ready to, gulp, POTTY TRAIN!

My friends, I think the fun may have just begun. If you don't hear from me for a while please just assume that I'm suffocating under a pile of pooke somewhere.