Merry Christmas

When I was growing up the Easter Bunny visited our house Friday night.  I think ideologically it was because my parents had no objection to hidden eggs and chocolate bunnies, but wanted to spend Easter Sunday focused on the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  I think pragmatically it was because getting to church on time was difficult enough without hunting eggs first. 

I don’t remember how my parents explained the altered schedule of festivities.  I do remember that since I received a basket of goodies earlier than any of my classmates I assumed that my family had our very own Easter Bunny.  And my childhood mind concluded that if we had our own Easter Bunny we must have actually had an entire complement of magical characters specific to our little family.  I was certain that there was a tooth fairy assigned to us exclusively.  And, of course, we had our very own personal Santa Claus.  I believed that our Santa had a north pole, a sleigh, flying reindeer including Rudolph, and an army of elves in a workshop making toys.  But it was all just for me, my parents, and  my siblings.  Other people had a different Santa.  I never wondered how Santa made it to all the houses in the whole world in one night because our Santa had only one family to visit

As I look back I am convinced that my childhood fantasies were the height of narcissism.  

Discoveries

I am very liberal in my usage of bathroom tissue. Actually, I don’t know that for sure. My consumption of toilet paper could be unremarkably average. Since bathroom habits are neither a frequent nor polite topic of social conversation I don’t really know how I compare to the rest of the population. What I do know is that toilet paper is not something that I make an effort to conserve. I use as much as I want whenever I need. My financial situation has never been so dire, and my concern for the environment never so great that I have felt the need to count and curb the number of squares I use. The Texan however, maintains the toilet tissue habits that he learned while living in Africa. When we got married he was rather surprised to see the regularity with which toilet paper made its way onto the shopping list. Now that the little red head has discovered toilet paper, I find that I am purchasing it at a frequency that seems excessive even to me.

Toddlerhood

Our little boy is growing up.  He doesn’t walk very much yet, but I’m pretty sure he is solidly in the toddler phase of life.  I base this assessment on the large path of destruction he can create in a very short amount of time.  I realize that for all of you with kids older than mine these types of events are old news, but it’s a first time adventure for me, so please indulge my story and pretend that you find it as cute and humorous as I do. 

A cold has been making its way through our household.  Today I had an awful headache.  Finally this afternoon I decided that what I really needed was a nap.  So I put my little boy in his room to play and went to lie down.  He was pretty sure that he had been abandoned for life and screamed like it was the end of the world.  This uproar did not help my headache.  So I rescued him from the confines of his bedroom, grabbed some of his toys, turned on some cartoons, and set him down to play in my room.  He settled down and I fell asleep.  20 minutes later I woke up when he pulled the Texan’s night stand down.  My little redhead looked at me and laughed like it was a spectacularly fun game.  I was really glad that he wasn’t hurt and the lamp didn’t break.  I got out of bed to start picking up and discovered that he had been very busy for 20 minutes. 

He had unpacked the diaper bag and spread pretzels throughout the room; unloaded both drawers of my night stand (I'm pretty sure he couldn’t reach those last week); tried to eat our rent check; found a sucker and unwrapped it leaving sticky handprints on the wall and a purple spot on the carpet; unloaded, and unfolded, all of the laundry that I did yesterday; and left all of his toys untouched.  Now it is his turn to take a nap.