Well, I keep taking notes on the "big doin's " around here, but I think I may have stalled too long again. Here are some of the pre-Christmas highlights.

OUT TAKES:

• "I what to show Miss Jenny what I'm wearing, 'cuz I'm a man now."

• from Josh's story to me: Once upon a time, there were two Kevinbirds that walked across the street without holding hands or looking, and they got hit by a car, and then they got hit by a truck, and they were squashed. And then they were okay...

• On a recent visit to Mom's, Mom was trying to do something.  Josh tried to help by telling her how to do it but she wanted to try it her way...without much success.  Finally Josh looked up at her, put his hand on his chin, and said, "So, um, tell me...how's that working for ya?"

twas the week before Christmas, and all through the house,
we are plagued and be-illed, so allow us to grouse


My aunt burst an ear-drum, but is still working the room




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One of the more interesting bits o'drama lately was that Josh got the stomach flu...actually Josh and I got it at the same time, so I was literally flopping around on the kitchen floor like a fish with vertigo, and Josh was getting the day's award for best fountain effects.  When it got to the point that he couldn't even keep water down, we took him to the doc, who prescribed something in a suppository that could  have stopped his heart. Now, the good news is that she mentioned this. The bad news is that there was no way in hell we were going to give him that, so the poor little guy had to run the gamut without medicinal intervention...It was the next day before his stomach finally calmed down enough to get fluids back into him and start him back on the recovery road.  He looked like a little alien creature with big hollow eyes and a giant head on a pencil-thin neck.  It broke our hearts to look at him.  Poor Jon was dashing back and forth between us both that night, but as I had stopped eating or drinking anything long before Josh did, I was able to recoup in time to take over when Jon came down with the plague. It was a rough couple of days, but everyone was back to their old selves directly.



And then on to Christmas Eve...which shall remain lodged in our minds forever as an expletive laden Christmas Carol because the elves waited until the last minute to assemble the Christmas toy of doom!  This time around Josh's big toy was a kitchen set with pots and pans (Do not laugh.  Our theory is that if he gets interested in cooking now, he will be interested in learning to cook his own meals later). The elves have learned their lesson, and will be prepping earlier next year AND making certain that whatever big toy comes into play will have minimal assembly requirements.  For this piece of, ahem, work, it took the elves from 11:30 p.m. (under constant threat of a small invader) to about 4 a.m. to snip, cut, curse, and snap about one hundred and twenty useless bits of plastic into one recognizable toy. I cannot speak of the other elf, but I know of at least one that was muttering under her breath, "(*&^ing hell, (*&^ ing hell, Why'd we pick this thing? I'd rather take a hammer to it or hang me with some string-ING!"  The other elf mentioned that the elf in question might be taking the whole process entirely too seriously, and that the singing elf's song not only had questionable grammar but was also likely to awaken a small invader. The singing elf glared at the other elf, deliberately quieted down, and began on another epithet-laden melody to along the lines of the "thumpity-thump-thump, thumpity-thump-thump thump! Look at Frosty go." However it should be noted that the lyrics at that point were nowhere near so innocent.  Finally the assembly process was complete, the buttons worked, the pans were in the oven...all was right with the world. (Though it should also be noted that when/if the Small Boy loses interest in the kitchen toy, there will be an elf waiting in the wings to...take care...of it ...personally and permanently.)


Christmas Day...much better than I anticipated.  Weather behaved. So did boy. Boy was fabulous. Boy was INCREDIBLE!  There were people all over the place, holiday decorations, flaming candles, and Josh was just stunning. He was well-behaved. He was polite. He was ornery, and we didn't even have to have the phasers set on "stun".  He and his uncles launched into a marathon bop-it session, he was so busy with them and that toy that he had little time to get into things he shouldn't.  (Yes, another bop-it found it's way to our house, and it has truly been a wonderful thing.)