That’s Larry, who said:

Our 5-year old dino lover, Seth, fractured his wrist (ice skating) three days before he is coming to Salt Lake for the big ski adventure due to start this weekend. Now, he’s wearing a nice cast and skiing is out of the question but he sure would love to spent some time with his prehistoric pals! He would also love to treat his older sister and parents to the same. Thanks for the chance.

In other words, I am confident the family four-pack of tickets could not have gone to a more deserving family. Hope you enjoy the show, Seth, and thanks to everyone who entered!

Remember, you can use the code RAPTOR to get $10 off if you still need tickets.

The kids were tired and Annie’s oldest, who truly is quite articulate, said that he would rather wait in the car than go in with his mom. The kids were in their coats, in their car seats.

A couple walked by and called the police, who came and had been at the car for three minutes when my friend got back to it. The female police officer who wrote up my friend did not know for sure whether the statute Annie had violated was state or federal, though she guessed federal. She was positive that children have to be 8 to be unattended in a car, and 12 if there are any children under 8 present also.

My friend was so upset and ashamed about the whole episode that she didn’t tell anyone but her husband for three weeks. When she finally told me about it, I did some research. I couldn’t find a state or federal law about leaving children unattended in cars. There are groups pushing for legislation to make cars safer for kids unattended in cars, and there are statutes about neglect, harm, and abuse to a child, but no such allegations were made in this case. (The police made no moves to open the car; they could see that the kids were happy and safe.)

Annie and I scoured the internet. She called the DMV and learned it’s not a traffic violation; she called the district court and realized the clerks had no clue beyond suggesting a call to the city police department, and, oh, wasn’t that odd — according to the code on the citation, Annie was charged with “trespass and graffiti.”

Today at the court appearance, the prosecutor’s case paper had the correct code on it. Turns out, there’s a city ordinance about leaving children under the age of 6 unattended in a car in a public place. Annie was too flustered and intimidated by the judge to defend herself; she pled guilty to an infraction and paid the (happily-low) $100 fine.

Now, there are several issues here:

1) Children die in cars every year from hyperthermia.

2) The couple who called the police did the right thing.

3) The American justice system is probably the most defendant-friendly in the history of the whole history, and yet it is still a maze of Kafka-esque proportions.

4) Mothers who care about their children never stop worrying whether they’re doing it right.

1) Children die in cars every year from hyperthermia. This happens in the summer time, when parents forget (or don’t care) that their children are in the car. Recent cases have involved parents forgetting to drop kids off at daycare. I haven’t heard of any cases in the winter time among children running errands with their parents. In the Ohio case of Brenda Nesselroad-Slaby (whose 2 year-old died after 8 hours in the car), no charges were brought because there was no “reckless conduct” present.

I’ve never heard of a kid being kidnapped out of a locked car in a parking lot, but this could happen. I don’t know how it could possibly happen to a five-year old and not a six-year old, but there you go.

2) The couple who called the police did the right thing. My friend might wish that they’d considered waiting a few more minutes to see if a parent would return. But what if Annie had fallen and gotten hurt? What if you walked past a car with two kids in it? Would you walk by? I hope not. (I hope you wouldn’t act smug when the mother got written up for it, either.)

3) The American justice system blah blah blah. Ignorance of the law is a poor defence, but when almost no one knows what the law is, and when there’s no intent to neglect or actual neglect or any harm, what purpose is there in humiliating a mother who is honestly doing her best, which is pretty darn good?

4) Mothers who care about their children always think they’re doing something wrong. And if they’re not doing it wrong, for sure some other mother is.

We parents are so hard on each other. A couple months ago I told another friend how tempted I was to leave Spot napping at home while I ran to the school to pick up Sally. I was SO tempted: Spot had just barely fallen asleep, and I hated to drag her out into the cold. The school is only three minutes away; we live in a very, very safe neighborhood. My friend told me she’d recently left her baby asleep at home in the exact same circumstances, only she took the baby monitor over to the neighbor’s house.

I woke Spot up that day. What if there’s a fire, I thought. My friend who had left her baby at home also recounted a time when she left her kids in the car at the printers’. She could see them through the store window and she was only gone for three minutes. But, she said, she would NEVER leave her kids for twelve minutes in a large parking lot.

Neither would I, for that matter. I think. Except maybe I have, at the grocery store? Or the movie rental place? Sally is almost 8, so she’s probably been at least six any time I’ve done that. And probably I was only in the store for nine minutes, so that’s okay.

I do leave Susan and Spot while I get a drink at the gas station (or used to!) — in fact they were in the car when I locked my keys in it last month.

My point: there are large gray areas, despite laws about booster seats for eight-year olds.

And negotiating the gray areas is tough enough without law enforcers adding unnecessarily to the guilt and uncertainty parents feel every day. Surely police officers can tell a difference between a mother running a quick errand and a mother leaving her kids in a car while she bar-hops.

When I told Dick about Annie’s mistake, he said, “Wow, reminds me of that time your friend Andrea passed a car on the right and the police pulled her over and made her feel so bad for endangering her kid who was in the back seat.”

That happened almost eleven years ago, when Dick and I were dating. I still remember Andrea showing up at my house right after it happened. She was shattered at the idea that she might be (thought) an unfit mother. Dick and I haven’t talked about that in ELEVEN YEARS, and when we did talk about it Sally was the merest twinkle in Dick’s eye, but we both remembered it, and I bet Andrea does too.

I’ve joked before that I’m going to wait to have another kid until the American Academy of Pediatrics decides it’s okay after all for babies to sleep on their stomachs. Because if I have to count the weeks until another newborn can turn over by herself and get some quality sleep, I just won’t make it.

I know I make mistakes as a parent. (And I know I’m not the only one). But I hate the feeling that everyone else is watching, waiting for me to screw up.

Jane

p.s. I’m in the running for a spotlight on Mormon Mommy blogs, if you want to go vote (in the sidebar). Because I AM a good mother, dammit, and even if this post isn’t even “funny in a makes you think sort of way” (as one of my sweet readers said), but just plain “makes you think” (I hope), I’m, uh, sure I’ll have something almost-funny up again soon. (Thanks also to the MomNerd.)

Comment of the day (so far) from Keli:

A most excellent post, thank you. I have done this several times. I admit it. I will run into the “Sev” to grab a hot chocolate, and I admit, I don’t want to unbuckle my 2 year old, and wrastle the 5 year old, and then have to buy them crap they won’t eat or drink in addition to my hot cocoa. It’s purely selfish. But if a mom can’t have her selfish time, what can she do?

I usually try to get a 12 year old to sit with my kids in the car while I bar hop, though. That makes me a much better mother.

There we were, planning Thanksgiving, who would bring the sweet potatoes (me) and who would make the rolls (her) and who would cook the turkey (mom), and Marcy said that we didn’t really need cranberry bread because last year no one ate it, probably because there were too many carb-y side dishes, what with the stuffing (mom) and the mashed potatoes (me) and the even more rolls (her).

Now, I don’t think it’s technically possible to have too many carb-y side dishes, but I’m willing to suppose that people like to save their desert-type appetites for the pies.

Still, I was reluctant to skip the cranberry bread: it’s a tradition. In fact, here’s a picture of me at seven-ish, making cranberry bread with Dad. Dad wasn’t exactly a big presence in the kitchen, so baking with him every year was special.

Real men zest their oranges.

So Marcy pulled out her notes from last year. That’s right. After our Thanksgiving feast at her fancy house last year, she sat down and wrote notes about what worked and what didn’t. And there, in black-and-white, was proof that no one eats the cranberry bread, at least, not in the kind of quantities that justify valuable oven space.

Marcy is a little bit organized. Whenever she makes a dish, she makes notes on the recipe: how it turned out, any modifications she made, and how her kids liked it. Whenever her kids get sick, she keeps track of symptoms (date and time they appear) and medicines (doses and times) in a little notebook. She even keeps her digital photos in labeled computer folders so she knows which she’s printed out so far.

I only know which photos I haven’t printed out yet because I haven’t printed any in approximately two and a half years.

But as part of my resolutions this year, I hope that taking notes will work for me.

To get me started, here’s what worked and didn’t for Christmas this year. All I have to do is read this list in early November, and our next Christmas season will be even better. Which, if we don’t get the by-now-traditional stomach bug, will not be hard to do.

Notes on Christmas 2008:

1. You want to do Christmas cards. Even if you think you really don’t, you do, so buy the stamps, order a photo card from Costco, write the letter. Start canvassing for addresses December 1st; mail by the 15th.

2. You always buy too many small presents from Dollar Tree and Wal-Mart and the dollar spot at Target. Remember the “Something they want, something they need, something to wear, something to read” idea for gifts. Or, buy each kid a 25-ish gift and then only a few smaller ones to open. Chapstick, Pez, fun toothbrushes, gum, and slinkies are big hits in the stockings.

3. Presents that brought the biggest smiles: kids fingernail polish from Grampa, plastic beads for making bracelets and necklaces, and the ponies. But you knew that. The stocking swap at Well-Rounded Woman was definitely worth it; thanks Robyn!

4. Sally, Susan, and Spot loved the Jesse Tree. You need to add to the ornaments/scripture stories. This year there were only 15 days of prophets/foreshadowings of Christ. (In addition to some of the traditional devotions, I added Moses and the brass serpent, Samuel the Lamanite, Alma, the Brother of Jared, Jacob, Micah, King Benjamin, and Lehi and the liahona).

Mormon Jesse Tree. (Yes, we believe in David's father Jesse.)

5. When Dick says we shouldn’t get each other gifts, what he really means is that he’s too preoccupied to get you anything. So get yourself something and tell him thanks. Also, he really likes it if you let the kids think that some of the gifts you spend hours finding, buying, and wrapping are from him.

6. The neighbor gifts of clementine oranges (”Orange you glad it’s Christmas?”) were good. The girls loved delivering them. Great family activity the first few Mondays in December.

7. People may not appreciate cranberry bread at Thanksgiving, but they do still love the Christmas Danish Pastry. Now is not the time to cut back on exercise.

I think that’s about it. Oh, one more: If you do want to get a family picture for the card, think about this when the weather is still nice. Because kids and pictures? Hard. Kids and pictures and sub-zero temperatures? INSANE, where insane means “streaming snot” and “red, freezing hands” and “hypothermic crankiness.”

Speaking of photos, it’s entirely likely that I’ll never get around to organizing them. At this point, it would be easier to get the kids to age backwards and take more photos. But next Christmas? Is going to rock.

What works for you?

Jane

p.s. There’s one more day to enter the Walking With Dinosaurs giveaway.

But they also like dinosaurs. At the risk of sounding horrifically gender-biased, dinosaurs are basically the only thing they love that doesn’t come accessorized in pink sequins and a matching plastic purse.

So far I’ve held out on Dick showing them Jurassic Park, even though that sentences me to endless viewings of the seventeen Land Before Time movies. And now that we have a pass to the Thanksgiving Point dinosaur museum here in Utah, the kids are getting just about enough of bones and fossils and playing in the erosion table.

Only, you can never get enough dinosaurs. Not really.

So I’m excited that the BBC’s Walking With Dinosaurs tour is coming to Salt Lake City next week. The friendly people there asked if I’d like to give away a family four-pack of tickets to opening night, which is Wednesday, January 14th, 7 pm, at the Energy Solutions Arena (where the Utah Jazz play).

Would I?

H-E-Double-Hockey sticks, YEAH!

Walking With Dinosaurs is supposed to be pretty darn cool. I mean, if those smarty BBC people are involved it’s gotta be good, right? It runs January 14th-18th, with matinees on Saturday and Sunday. (Not that I’d go on a Sunday, but then, if I were Jewish I wouldn’t go on a Saturday, and if I were Muslim, not on a Friday, so basically, we’re pretty much covered).

If you don’t win the giveaway or you need more tickets (because, hello? Utah? family FOUR-pack?), use the code RAPTOR to get $10 off each ticket.

To enter the Walking With Dinosaurs giveaway, simply leave a comment telling me who the dinosaur lover is at your house before January 7th, and I’ll use the random number gizmo-thingie. If you’re too far away from Utah to use the tickets yourself, enter anyway and give someone you love a surprise after-Christmas present. If you don’t know anyone within an hour of Salt Lake City, enter anyway still. I can recommend several deserving dinosaur-philes to you.

Jane

DANG am I glad I reached those goals and can now focus on planting a garden, finishing my basement single-handedly (because I don’t like to use my left hand for construction projects), and learning Farsi for the Foreign Service.

Everybody is resolution writing and year in review-ing. I’m scared to check if I posted my goals last January. And despite often thinking that my latest post is the best thing I’ve written up until five minutes after I hit publish, I won’t be listing my favorite posts of the year. Because six minutes after I hit publish, I want to go snivel in bed, covers pulled tight over the lower half of my face.

Two of my favorite bloggers, one as secular and brazenly-career-minded as possible and the other as devoutly on fire as only the recently-converted can be have led me to think on my resolutions in new ways.

Surprisingly, what Penelope Trunk and Jennifer at Conversion Diary have to say about goals and potential is compatible enough to convince me:

Penelope says:

Living up to your potential is not crossing off everything on your to do list on time, under budget. Or canonizing your ideas in a book deal. Really, no one cares. You are not on this earth to do that. Trust me. No one is. You are on this earth to be kind. That is your only potential.

Jennifer says:

Any list of New Year’s resolutions should having growing closer to God as the ultimate goal. I need to remember this and ask myself with each one, “Is my true desire with this goal to better conform myself to Christ?” This is true not only of the goal itself but the way I approach it (e.g. you could approach a budgeting goal in a God-centered way or a greed-centered way).

I do have goals for this year. I’d like to lose 20 pounds, be more patient, organize the finances, meal planning, and laundry, pray with greater intent, write something. Oh, and plant a garden.

But I want to chose one overall goal, one goal that’ll bring me closer to God and bless my children. One goal that has a hundred applications every day and would correct something that I have rationalized and defended as my right as an overwhelmed mother.

I want to go an entire year without yelling.

Probably I am delirious about the possibility of even approaching this, but I want it. I want it so bad I can taste it. I want to believe in the grace of Christ, the tender mercies of our Lord, that if I try really, really hard, and pray really hard, I can change what is all too often the fundamental dynamic of my interaction with my children.

I would never yell at a friend the way I do my four year old when she won’t put her boots back on. Right. Now.

I would never yell at my boss the way I do my seven-year old when she touches something I’ve told her thirteen times not to touch. (If I had a boss.)

I would never yell at my two-year old in front of my Savior. (I think.) (Unless I somehow forgot He was standing there.) (Like, say, if my two-year old threw her syrup-drenched pancake squares on the floor. Repeatedly.)

So that’s it. The goal I am going to resolute over all others:

No Yelling.

Can I do it?

Yes and no.

Beth at Blog O’Beth has a family tradition of writing predictions rather than resolutions. This makes a lot of sense to me. I could predict, for example, that I will lose 20 pounds but gain back 15 or that I will organize the finances only to give up on meal planning altogether. But I’m too young for that sort of realism.

Instead, I predict that:

1) My kids will disobey, and annoy, and irritate beyond all hope of bearing.

2) I’ll backslide on the yelling. In fact, one day in early February, I will snap in the middle of a crowded grocery store and implore at the top of my lungs “Why, oh everything holy in heaven and in earth, WHY?”

3) I’ll feel bad about this yelling, which means that my goal is working. Because:

4) I’ll learn for sure that it is possible to interact with minors who share my DNA without resorting to threats of violence, and:

5) Just the act of trying, really, really hard, and praying, really hard, will improve the spirit of our home.

Jane

What do you predict or resolute?

You see. Yesterday? The entire day from sunup to bedtime?

I went an entire day without yelling. At anyone. Not Sally, not Susan, not Spot. Not even Dick.

I know what you’re thinking:

Jane, it was Sunday. Who yells on Sunday?

or

Jane, it’s the holidays. A time of cheer and peace and adoration of the sweet baby Jesus. Who yells during Christmas?

or

Jane, your kids were all sick, vomiting and lethargic on the couch. Who yells at sick kids? Even Andrea Yates took the day off on the Sunday after Christmas.

But what you don’t realize (or what you might realize if you have children of your own and you are the kind of person who has two arms, two legs, and a healthy fear of the IRS — Not that people without arms and legs wouldn’t realize this too) is that Sunday is usually the worst offender when it comes to the aggravated provocation of mother-yelling. And that the Christmas holidays, when children have multiple days off of school and there are (heaven forbid) parties and shopping and general merriment are an even worse agent provocateur of the dreaded mean voice. And that Andrea Yates probably went crazy precisely because she worked so hard to never yell at her kids. It just ain’t natural, friends.

But I did it.

And NOTHING can ever take that away from me. No matter what the future holds, I’ll always have December twenty-eighth, in the year of our Lord 2008, as a great, shining monument to the power of clean living, a positive outlook, and medicinal quantities of jet-puffed marshmallow creme.

Who knows what I might accomplish next?

Peace in the Middle East?

Stabilization of the world financial markets?

Kicking of the Mountain Dew dependence once and for all?

Now wait.

Let’s not get carried away here.

Jane

If you do have to get sick, make sure you have a supportive, understanding extended family, who won’t hate you (at least to your face) for spreading germs instead of holiday cheer, and a husband who can be prodded into duty.

I think we’re finally on the mend, and no one has ended up in the ER on IV fluids like Sally did four Christmases ago.

It’s incredible how good it is to feel almost-normal after feeling like death. I feel so ding-dang human after a couple days of gatorade and saltines, and just now a bath, that I’m actually excited to start cleaning up the holiday haul. Also, if there was any uncertainty as to whether I need to lose some weight, the fact that my clothes are fitting better around the waist after just 48 hours of the Mary-Kate diet is enough to convince me.

I meant to post our Year in Twitter a couple days ago. You know how they say that you won’t wish, on your deathbed, that you’d spent more time at the office? Well, if you Twitter, you’ll find, at the end of the year, that you don’t wish you’d Twittered more about the office. A lot of this web 2.0 and social media crap is of debatable value (my mother would say it’s not even very debatable, I think), but it prompts me to record some of the {amazingly precocious} things my children say. I mean, my kids are well above-average, I think you’ll agree:

Dick & Jane Year in Tweets

3 April. Putting in my contacts. Hear a slurping sound. Spot is drinking out of my contact case.

10 April. Took phone apart to see battery model number. Ran to help Spot in the tub. Susan brings phone parts to me and says “Spot broke your phone.”

17 April. Sally: “My forehead feels like cheese when you rub it like this.”

19 May. Sally (brandishing a screwdriver): “Abracadabra.” Susan: “That’s not a wand, that’s a TOOL.”

26 May. Dick is ‘off chocolate.’ We drive past Wendy’s. Me: “Let’s get Frosties. Oh, I forgot.” Tom: “No, let’s stop – I’m only off hard chocolate.”

7 June. Dick doesn’t know why the kids are bothering him so this evening. I don’t either. That’s how they always act.

18 June. Turn around to see Spot whaling on Grandma’s dog. Spot quickly smiles and puts her arm around the dog. Right.

27 June. Told girls to get their tookeys to the table. Now they’re walking backwards with bums up, saying, “My tookey’s dragging me to the table.”

8 Jul. Took kids to Grandma’s for a couple days. Unfortunately, I have to stay here with them.

9 Jul. Susan can swim 15 feet! Face IN the water. Oh, and use a diving stick as a microphone.

13 Sept. Susan and Spot singing a number song in the back of the minivan. Sally: “It’s fun to hear Susan and Spot learning together.”

15 Oct. Telling girls about a party at Aunt Marcy’s house. Susan: “A party with LOTS OF FOOD?”

4 Dec. Sally swept the kitchen floor today. “I want to be a good girl.” Aww. “I want Santa to bring me lots of presents.” Points for honesty.

I hope your Christmas was cheery and healthy!

Jane

But as I watched the dancers, in odd (but modest!) angel-nun costumes, and the high school bell choirs, in odd marching band-liturgical robes, swarm the stage in front of the choir, behind the orchestra and the elaborate Victorian Christmas decorations, all I could think of was the long rehearsals. The rushed dinners, the set-building and instrument tuning, the costume-sewing and voice exercises, the light checks and sound checks, and the driving and planning and parking and waiting and the taking-it-again-from-the-top.

Despite all the spectacle and the moments of great theater, it just wasn’t spectacular enough to transport me to that place where you forget everything going on behind the scenes.

Or maybe I’m getting old, and tired. When I read a good post lately, I think of the blogger hacking away at her computer, trying to tune out the kids or the husband or the shrieking mounds of laundry. As I eat a delicious meal, I think of the pots and pans stacked in the sink, and the garlic chopping and potato dicing.

At the Mo-Tab, I got goose bumps during the a capella sections of Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring, and we laughed delightedly at The Friendly Beasts. But several of the songs were a bit blah, despite the star-worthy voice and presence of Brian Stokes Mitchell and the moving dramatic reading of Christmas with the Longfellows by Edward Herrmann.

(Edward Herrmann was great, by the way; knowing that he played Goldie Hawn’s loser husband in Overboard only added to his performance.)

We were late picking up our kids. The show was longer than I expected, the underground parking garage was stuffed with concert-goers, and the roads were icy. We grabbed a snack at Carl’s Jr, and I had Dick put on coconut verbena lotion afterwards so our friends wouldn’t smell the hamburgers and fries on us and know that we hadn’t hurried home quite as fast as we could have.

It was all so exhausting. The dressing-up, the babysitter-arranging (including reciprocation), the smiling at our seatmates, the standing for Handel’s Hallelujah chorus, the sucking of seventeen cough drops and the fretting over driving in a blizzard and the pressing question of exactly who chose those bizarre habits for the angel-nun dancers.

We wondered if the evening was worth our effort. I wondered if it was worth the efforts of the hundreds of performers. How many moments must be sublime for a performance to be worth it? How many images in a post or bites in a meal?

Usually I find that if I’ve forgotten for even a second the toys scattered on the floor and the errands to be run, then a story or an idea or a prayer has been worth the time.

As her teacher Mr. Carpenter reminds Emily in L.M.Montgomery’s Emily of New Moon, the Lord would have spared Sodom and Gommorah if ten righteous people had been found there. That’s after he’s looked through her reams of poetry and found only a dozen lines worth keeping.

There are so many hands to be washed and lessons to be taught. So many dinners to be cooked and books to be read.

Will it be worth it to work at creating my own art?

I don’t know.

But it was worth it for Longfellow, who wrote I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day a couple years after losing his wife in a fire that burned him badly trying to save her. His son had been crippled in the continuing Civil War. He said “How inexpressibly sad are all the holidays” the year after Fanny’s death. And the year after that he wrote this:

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail
With peace on earth, good will to men.”

Rachel is the same age as my Susan (4) and Jacob is the same age as my Spot (2). Rachel is the most placid kid I’ve ever met. Even in the minivan, where she’s exiled to the lonely middle seat while the others ride in the back and watch the movie, Rachel is content.

But Jacob is another story. That boy is not quiet or incurious or eagerly agreeable, if you know what I’m saying.

Things are fine on Tuesdays and Thursday mornings though, when Sally is busy negotiating the social structures of the second grade.

On a fine Saturday morning, however, when we are babysitting while Chrysanthemum and her husband dress rehearse for the church Christmas program, it’s a whole new dynamic.

(And it’s almost enough to make me wish I were at bit more musically inclined.)

Sally is used to being the leader of the little people. She objects to being lumped in with “the kids,” but she condescends to being known as the leader of the little people, despite my sweet mother-in-law’s objection that this might be offensive to the persons in TLC’s Little People, Big World reality TV show.

(I think if you’re willing to be filmed for a reality TV show, you probably won’t get your knickers in a twist over a seven-year old calling her sisters “little people”). (Because reality show stars are big-hearted like that).

This morning Susan shared her paints with Jacob, who refreshed his muddy water at a rate consistent with his fascination for the water that comes out of the door of the fridge. Spot did some hard time in the laundry room after slapping Rachel for breathing on her dolly stroller, and Sally decided, after repeatedly expressing her gratitude, loudly, for not having any brothers, that the fort in the loft is now a Girls Club.

Dick objected.

Dick is, after all, male. Also, his ears were being pierced by the screams emitting from the other male person in the room.

Sally said she would make a separate Boys Club for whenever Jacob is over to play.

This satisfied no one but Sally, Susan, Spot, Rachel, and me. Which is to say that it satisfied everyone but the two male persons who found that to be rather discriminatory. Or, in other words, the screaming from the short male person was not stopped by Sally’s campaign promises of equal facilities and equal opportunities for hiding from the grown-ups.

And I guess I can’t blame Jacob. It probably wouldn’t be any fun to hide out in a Boys Club by yourself. For one thing, one of the main components of a club is the other members, so how could a club of one be even remotely equal to a club of four?

I thought about taking Sally aside for a quick rundown on Civil Rights, beginning with the War Between the States and Brown v. Board of Education and continuing on to Rosa Parks and Caroline Kennedy, who deserves that senate seat even if her husband didn’t cheat on her because DANG she wears pearls well.

But by the time I had prepared to fight this threat to justice everywhere, Jacob had agreed to Sally’s suggestion that they go string bracelets from the plastic bead collection.

Because, you see, there are no girl toys and boy toys, no Girls Club and Boys Club. Only love and harmony and SHARING, at our house.

The fading stretchmarks on my calves from the first-pregnancy Entenmann cheese bun cravings.

I have the heart that melts, the lips that yell when my oldest tries to help but is doing it wrong. I have the eyes that tear-up at the intolerable cuteness, the hands that yank hair when a two-year old cannot stand still for five seconds for ponytails so we can see your pretty eyes.

I have the heartbreak for the baby who never swelled and teemed. The regret for the swearing and the yelling and the times I wished they’d just GO AWAY for two minutes. I have the arms that comfort and the lap that is spreading to accommodate my ever-taller almost-eight-year old.

I have the ears that hear phantom crying and panic whenever the snurgling baby suddenly starts breathing quietly. I have the dry, cracked skin from washing endless milk cups and water cups and juice cups and sippy cups.

I have the feet that stomp on the gas as we rush to be on time for school. I have the nose that cringes from smelling another pair of panties, and the miserly practicallity that cannot even consider JUST WASHING a pair that might be clean.

I have the neck my youngest now considers her personal handwarmer and the patience (laziness) to count to three five times before employing a humane time-out. I have the featherbrain that forgets early-out day at school and the knees that remember to pray with the kids, even when I forget to pray by myself.

I have the hormones that insisted at 22 that I have a baby RIGHT NOW, instead of going to graduate school, and the neural-synapse-thingies to wonder if that was a smart choice.

I have the sing-song voice that can cajole and the imagination to make them want to want what I want them to want. And the impatience often to wish that they’d simply do it because I said so.

I have the hopes and the dreams and the remorse and anxiety and fear and the certainties and the what-ifs and the could-have-beens and thank-God-it’s-nots and the thank-God-it-ises.

I have the wisdom to realize, and gratitude to be thankful, that most of what I am today is shaped by being a mother. And the selfishness to resent that three small beings dictate and describe and delineate me.

And I have the desire of a mother to see my three girls become mothers themselves. Because then they’ll know, and they’ll forgive, and they’ll get what’s coming to them, and they’ll love as fiercely and as imperfectly as I do, and they’ll wish I lived close enough to babysit, but I won’t, because I’ll be on a trip around the world.

Until I come home to smell the baby smell, and cuddle the baby warmth close to my mother’s body, and then hand that baby back at the first sign of action in the lower abdominal region.

Jane

I wrote this as part of the Mother Letter Project. I had mixed thoughts on the MLP, ranging from “gimmick” to “how sweet” to “how come Dick couldn’t think up something like this for me?” And then I read that you could purchase, for the low, low price of FORTY-TWO DOLLARS, your very own WOMB (fabric bag) to hold your copy of the Mother Letter Project, and I barfed a little bit in my mouth, even though I hate that phrase, but that’s really what happened.

Then I remembered when I first became a mother, when we lived in the bottom floor of a little A-frame Archie Bunker house in The Bronx and I had no mother friends (22, remember? in NYC?) and my own mother lived two thousand miles away in Utah. And she asked a couple of her young mother friends to write to me and tell me I’d survive. My mother admitted that she’d been out of the trenches long enough to forget how stinky and deep and dark they are. So these wonderful women emailed me, and I printed out their letters and read and re-read them. And I SURVIVED. (so far). And so will you. (I think).

I love Christmas. The lights, the smells, the excitement in my children’s faces. Susan(4) is hoping for a lot of candy in her stocking (Halloween made a big impression this year). Sally(7) has asked for a stuffed animal now that Flower, her favorite purple bunny, has been loved into an early Velveteen grave. Spot(2) hasn’t asked for anything yet, but she has learned to shout a defensive “mine!” whenever Susan eyes her favorite pony.

When we lived in Cairo, our Christmases were sweet and simple. There were no extended family dinners or office parties or lights on the house or presents to ship. Our trees were bushy juniper shrubs. Our nativity sets were made of clay or wood by native Coptic Christians. Celebrating Christmas seemed like a deliberate choice. A Christian commemoration in a Muslim country that signified our belief, our hope in Christ.

The second year we were in Egypt I miscarried on December 23rd. It was an even quieter Christmas.

Every year since then, I’ve wished that our Christmas could be simpler, quieter. Of course, when we were in Cairo I wished for a large Noble Fir, and a ham for Christmas dinner, and I longed to see my own parents and eat rot kohl with my sisters and brothers. We only had one child in Cairo, so of course it was quieter, and simpler.

Now we have three kids, and I’m glad for the family parties and the friendly neighbors who bring treats. And the lights that deck the houses we drive by and the carols on the radio and the big tree that stands in the corner.

I even like the Christmas cards that I swore this year I wouldn’t do.

I think the problem is that I do honestly want a smaller Christmas, a Christmas on the inside, so I say, This year I won’t buy ANY presents or do any sort of craft or send any kind of card. I won’t go to any parties or decorate the house or bake the Allen’s special almond pastry. And then I get a little bit stressed as I add all these things back in, one by one, a month too late, where a little bit stressed means I yell and say the f-word during our family activity EVEN THOUGH I’ve realized I LIKE cards, and crafts (easy ones), and little teacher presents that the kids can wrap, and decorations, and I ESPECIALLY LIKE the special almond pastry, even if it does take two pounds of butter and four hours to make.

There must be a way to reconcile the simple Christ-full Christmas on the inside with all the little family traditions that do make the season sweeter. And I think a big part of that will be making plans starting in October April?

Tonight we delivered Christmas Clementines to our neighbors. I’d found cute Chinese-takeout-style treat cartons at Costco and Dick looked online for a suitably-cheesy tagline (Orange you glad it’s Christmas?). Susan wore her Rambo headband and Spot refused to wear her coat. Sally herded her sisters from van to doorstep. Dick and I giggled like teenagers as the girls clomped along in their snowboots.

I think I better figure out the Christmas of details and presents and church parties and ornaments. The Christmas of stockings and family dinners and advent calendars and tinsel – without all the yelling.

Unless we move to India.

Jane

What works for you for simplifying the holidays while keeping all your favorite traditions?

Things like NOT LOCKING the car when it’s in the garage or TURNING THE LIGHTS OFF in the car (so your wife doesn’t have to ride her bike 10 miles in the snow, pulling two solid kids along in the bike trailer, up over Unity Pass, elevation 5070) or FINDING A PLACE WE’VE BEEN TO SEVEN TIMES or SMELLING THE DIRTY DIAPER WITH HIS OWN NOSE.

And poor Dick might justifiably shake his head when I crash into the garage:

Or when I lock the keys in my car at the gas station or forget to pick up Sally on early-out day (for the fifth time in two months) or when I drag him to family functions at the last minute or when I forget to turn off the oven that’s on LOW to speed the rising of my rolls:

But when all of my featherbrained-ness happens in a very short week, compounded by HIS featherbrainedness, honestly, I just want to go back to bed and sleep until April.

And I fear for our children. I fear that one day Sally will be reading a book and forget to breathe and turn blue and asphyxiate and die. Because it’s complicated to read and breathe at the same time. Or, you know, drive and plan a blog post.

So here are my tips for the week:

1) Close all doors before pushing your dead car anywhere.

2) Turn off all the lights in your car so the battery doesn’t die. (twice).

3) Turn off the oven if you have plastic in there.

4) Change the baby’s diaper if it smells toxic. Ignoring it will NOT make it go away.

5) If you are a kindred spirit of Anne of Green Gables, marry someone down-to-earth and capable, like Gilbert.*

Jane

*There are some benefits of marrying someone equally feather-brained; they are usually good at understanding exactly why it was that you forgot to screw your head on in the morning.

Lexus has their annual December to Remember campaign going on. The ads start with a little boy or little girl speaking directly into the camera, a voice from the past, reminding you how excited you were to get that Atari or that pony, and how you thought that was the best Christmas ever.

Parents and siblings interact with each other in the semi-sepia tinted background while self-centered, spoiled Johnny or Sarah is childishly unaware that Christmas is about something bigger than expensive toys.

The commercial ends, of course, with the little child from your past taking you aside and saying SPEND SOME TIME WITH YOUR FAMILY THIS YEAR, NUMB NUT, AND REMEMBER THE REASON FOR THE SEASON, YA BIG DOPE.

No, shockingly, the commercial ends with the stunning revelation that the best Christmas ever would be one in which you get a Lexus.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that school kids are often introduced to logical fallacies and critical thinking by exploring advertisements. Check out this lesson plan for a quick review of logical fallacies (or this site for a comprehensive list) and how they show up in everything from magazine ads to infomercials to Super Bowl commercials to blogs.

Which isn’t to say that all logical fallacies are bad. Grampa sent us the dog house commercial last week. Dick thought it was hilarious, and I think he learned a lot from watching it.

Why are some ads so grating, and others, every bit as commercial and fake and obvious, turn out to be just plain entertaining? Are you willing to forgive a multitude of logical fallacies as long as something is also funny and clever? And at what age do you start pointing out the logical fallacies to your children?

Jane

But the Vietnam war? Basically I know that my dad got an academic(?) deferment and that Jane Fonda was against it. So when I heard the soundbites about President-elect Obama’s ties to William (Bill) Ayers during the election, I tuned them out. But references to the “Weather Underground” struck me. Wouldn’t that make a great title for a children’s book?

Anyway, Bill Ayers has an op-ed piece in today’s New York Times. He says that the media painted him as an “unrepentant domestic terrorist” during the campaign, an invented character that is “not even close” to what he really is.

Since I know as little about the Vietnam War and anti-war demonstrators as anyone who’s seen Forrest Gump possibly could, here’s how Bill Ayers describes himself and the actions of Weather Underground, a group he co-founded in 1970:

The Weather Underground went on to take responsibility for placing several small bombs in empty offices — the ones at the Pentagon and the United States Capitol were the most notorious . . .

The Weather Underground crossed lines of legality, of propriety and perhaps even of common sense.  . . . We did carry out symbolic acts of extreme vandalism directed at monuments to war and racism, and the attacks on property, never on people, were meant to respect human life and convey outrage and determination to end the Vietnam war.

Peaceful protests had failed to stop the war. So we issued a screaming response. But it was not terrorism; we were not engaged in a campaign to kill and injure people indiscriminately, spreading fear and suffering for political ends.

So, what is Bill Ayers?

1) He admits to placing bombs. Non-fatal bombs, and anyway, peaceful demonstrations hadn’t worked. What’s a conscientious protester to do? Besides, terrorism isn’t about non-fatal bombs, it’s about “spreading fear.” Unh. What, exactly, is the point of a bomb if it is not death and it is not fear? Isn’t fear the APPROPRIATE RESPONSE to random bombs? Perhaps they should have tried sparkly fireworks if all they wanted was to make a statement.

2) He says terrorism is “for political ends.” How is the end of a war not a “political end”?

3) He differentiates between targeting property and targeting people. This argument is tragically, tragically flawed. What if a Pentagon secretary forgot her purse and returned to get it before going home to her family? How lucky was it that no one died in those offices where people worked every day?

Is Bill Ayers not an “unrepentant domestic terrorist”?

terrorist = risks or destroys human life for political ends

domestic = in the U.S.

unrepentant = (Ayers says his “real regret” is that “the antiwar movement” was unsuccessful) = unwilling to ‘fess up, even as your own facts condemn you.

What I’d really like to know is if, in his job as professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Bill Ayers is so removed from independent, critical thinkers that he could write a piece like this and consider it at all persuasive. Wouldn’t a first-year composition student point out the glaring contradictions and self-serving rationalizations?

Does he not have a working dictionary to define complicated terms like “terrorism” and “domestic” and “unrepentant” for him? Let me help a professor out, Dr. Ayers. Try dictionary.com.

Jane

p.s. I’ve got a fun post coming about falling in love with my family at the dinner table last week. It’s cheerful and moving and mommy-grateful-loving. I just had to get this off my chest first. Thanks for bearing with me. (or if not, you know, whatever). Love you!

But some people really sold out. I mean, really.

If you visit ChristmasWrapped.com, you might think you’ve stumbled on a helpful group blog by some of the biggest mommy bloggers out there — Dooce, PioneerWoman, MightyMaggie, etc.

Here, you might think, I can crack the code of what cool gifts and gadgets are on the wishlists at the big kids’ table.

But as you look around a little more, you might recognize the Target logo and the “Isaac Mizrahi for Target” brand, or that every outlink in every post is to a product page on Target’s website.

Hmmmm.

So you click on the About this Site page and you realize, not from the completely un-iformative and actually diversionary text, but from the FM logo, that these are all bloggers in the Federated Media stable, bloggers who earn their living by running FM ads on their personal sites, and that ChristmasWrapped.com is merely a platform for Target to advertise with Federated Media.

What are supposed to look like spontaneous reviews of (AWESOME! Jon loves this! MarlboroMan wants that!) products are actually barely modified regurgitations of the promotional material provided by Target’s marketing department.

It’s tacky product placement taken to the nth degree.

And it would damage the credibility of the bloggers involved (because nowhere is there a disclaimer that the endorsements are in any way recompensed, which they are — just a bit of business-speak rubbish that says precisely nothing), except they are apparently so embarrassed about their participation in the project that they don’t refer to it on their own sites.

Perhaps because each, in her own way, makes her living on her blog by providing “honest,” “candid,” and “uncensored,” views of the world.

You go girl! Tell it like it is! Keep it real, baby!

How much is too much?

Or have we established that we are all prostitutes and are now just dickering over price?*

Jane

*Google has FAILED me. There’s some anecdote about Coolidge or Truman or some other dead president guy talking to a woman and her saying she’d sleep with him for a million dollars, but when he offers her 10 bucks, she says, indignantly, “Sir, I am not a prostitute” and he says, “Madam, we have already established that you are; now we are just dickering over price.”

And my dad is not answering his phone, and I know he knows what I’m talking about. Dad?

*Updated to add

I’m not saying sponsorship/advertising is bad. It’s just like getting paid to work. (In fact, it’s exactly like getting paid to work).

But that doesn’t mean that all sponsorship/advertising is done well. It might be difficult for sponsorship to be acknowledged, transparent ,and (editorially) as-least-influential-as-possible, but when we trust journalists or bloggers or doctors to be honest, then we expect the journalist to disclose her biases and the blogger her sponsors and the doctor her drug trial involvement. Transparency, while a much-maligned buzzword, is a very worthy goal.

BlogHer tells me, for example, that I can’t swear profusely or use Adult content on this site as part of my contractual agreement. This is chafing at times, but honestly, it’s more the thought that my grandma reads that keeps me on the straight-and-narrow.

Mom’s Minivan Rules

1) No open windows (all that noise).

2) No reading lights on (all that night blindness).

3) No talking (unless Mommy asks how your day was, in which case you should answer and speak up and always remember that Mommy is involved). (Crack cocaine Portable DVD player provided; see? Reasonable).

A couple weeks ago someone who shall remain nameless (rhymes with “fusion” and “collusion” and “dead-meat-usan”) left all the interior reading lights on in the minivan. I usually turn the master switch in the dashboard off to prevent this, but someone hit that too on her scenic way out of the car.

The next day the battery was dead.

I called my mom (who lives 45 minutes away) in panic, and she reminded me that I now have neighbors who would probably be just as happy to jump start me as our old neighbors would have been to sell me drugs.

I walked Sally to school and told Susan that preschool was too far to walk, and then I called up Chrysanthemum, who was more than happy to come flex her girl-power muscles. (I realized later that she would have lent me her car if I’d thought to ask, but it is still new to me to have actual, helpful neighbor/friends).

We read in the manual about popping the gear shift lock releaser-thingie, and then she offered to push the car out of the garage while I steered. I was feeling pretty good about all this do-it-herself ingenuity. But of course I didn’t want her to have to push my weight on top of the minivan’s weight, so I reached in to steer while standing on the ground with the driver’s side door open.

Chrysanthemum and I realized at about the same time, that, pushing a car in neutral, even a heavy Honda Odyssey, is a lot easier than you might think. This was at about the same time that the driver’s side door smashed into the garage wall.

The moral of the story (and what works for me) is:

Develop a healthy (realistic) self-image so that when your car does die, as cars are bound to do at some point, you won’t be silly enough to insist on not adding your weight to the FORTY-SIX HUNDRED POUNDS the car already weighs.

Jane

p.s. It’s not all bad. I know a guy who knows a guy named Carlos who can bang out those, uh, “dents” for me for a really good price. Special price just for me, you know?

p.p.s. If you’ve ever thought it’s just not right that Mom doesn’t get a stocking on Christmas morning unless she stuffs it herself, head over to The Well-Rounded Woman for a fabulous Christmas stocking swap.

I know my youngest sister would find that hard to believe. Once Mary and Karen and I were driving along a dark road and I told them something I’d been thinking about for awhile. Karen asked if I just say everything that pops into my head, and I reassured her that I refrain from saying at least nine out of ten of the things that pop into my head.

I wondered today, as we did the usual Sunday things, what I would write on this the last day of the great NaBloPoMo (a day so significant that, yea, verily I say unto you, nearly 99.99% of all the earths’ inhabitants have never even dreamed of being aware of it).

What would you write if you only had one more month to live? And you can’t say “A letter to my family telling them how much I love them.” Pretend you’ve already done that. Or that your family, you know, knows that you love them, because you smell their panties to determine cleanliness WITH YOUR OWN NOSE.

And you can’t say “Instructions for my funeral,” because, get over it. Funerals are for the living, not the dead. I don’t know why people do that thing where they plan out their funerals. Does anyone really do that? A birthday party for six year-olds is about my limit planning-wise, so I’ll leave the funeral seating arrangements to the experts.

What would you write?

Your memoirs? Gothic poetry? That fiction story that’s been nagging at the corners of your mind for months? (years?) A rock opera? The great American novel? The great Madagascarian novel? A play? A screenplay? An inaugural speech for if you were elected president? I know, a BLOG POST. A postcard to your estranged mother in Australia?

A few things I’d like to write include:

* A romance novel that’s kind of a cross between Jane Eyre, Some Kind of Wonderful, and Suddenly You.*

* A hymn of praise/unworthiness. Take a classic measure/phrase pattern and preferably a tune that was once a Welsh drinking song, and write my own lyrics. Deep, forgiveness-inducing lyrics.

* Memoirs of that period in my life when I fell in love with completely the wrong person, about a year and a half before I fell in love again, this time with completely the right person.

* Some sort of motherhood handbook that tells the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Easy, because naturally there is only one right way to be a mother.

What would you write if you had only a month to live? (and you can’t say that you’d be too busy spending time with your family, telling them how much you love them. Let’s say if you have six months, okay? Surely in that much time you’d want to leave some sort of mark. What would it be?)

Jane

*I’m not recommending Suddenly You to the gentle readers out there. It’s a bit racy.

Posting every day for a month is demanding and specific enough that you start to hold your breath at the end, hoping you’ll make it to the edge of the pool before your arms give out. You think of all the other things you need to be checking off your To-Do list, and realize (half-guilty, half-relieved) that you can’t possibly deal with them until this thing is over.

Two quotes have been chasing each other like hamsters in my brain all month (yep, there’s a lot of space in there for hamster wheels and puppy dog tails). The first is so intoxicating, exhilarating, liberating, inspiring, and I have no idea what it really means (or, if, in fact, Ray Bradbury ever really said this):

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

Why is this so appealing? Why does it make me want to run BARBARIC YAWPING to an Edenic spring, tearing off all my clothes as I go and cannon-balling into the water with a splash that ripples all the way to the shore?

The second quote, I am all too sure that I know exactly what it means, and what it means is that I will never be a genius (i.e. “one who creates”) so long as I am mired in the motherhood. (Handy, right, to blame all my un-genius-ness on the myriad mundane moorings of my morassifisic life?):

A genius is the man in whom you are least likely to find the power of attending to anything insipid or distasteful in itself. He breaks his engagements, leaves his letters unanswered, neglects his family duties incorrigibly, because he is powerless to turn his attention down and back from those more interesting trains of imagery with which his genius constantly occupies his mind.

Perhaps William James just wanted an excuse to give his wife for why he was always late for dinner.

And I am the wife. Feeling (not-guilty-but-defensive) if dinner is not on the table.

Jane

Dick’s family was not the big Mormon family I’d always hoped to marry in to. They were better than what I had imagined, just as Dick turned out to be better than I expected. Probably I should be disappointed to have so little in-law angst as fodder for the blog.

Grampa is smart, interesting to talk to, a good guest, well-read, and totally incapable of surviving a Utah winter. We’ve adjusted our thermostat so that he feels better about getting out of bed in the mornings.

At restaurants, Grampa talks to the waitress and tells the hostess as we leave that Mallory sure was friendly and helpful today.

When a clerk finally finds the jarred mincemeat pie filling for us, Grampa thanks him effusively, and regrets not getting his name so he can praise him to the manager.

Grampa bought the girls a trampoline for their birthdays and Christmas. It came with all the safety features, and the girls are pretty excited.

Though they might have been satisfied with a large plastic bovine and some chocolate rice cakes.

Some of the things that I’m most grateful for are things or people that I never anticipated would so important to me. My father-in-law, and my relationship with him, unexpectedly make my life much richer in ways that I never imagined.

Jane

Of course you can’t know.

Dick could turn out to be a mass murderer tomorrow, and I would be the last person to know.

Not really. I keep pretty close tabs on that boy.

As I’ve told my sisters before, I knew that I had to marry Dick. That he was it. When he got cold feet after we’d been engaged for about a month (remember this is also just a month after we met), I felt that my life was over, and not just in a Twilight “I love you even though you’re a vampire and sometimes want to eat me” sort of way.

Basically, I said, Dick is my evidence that there is a God and that He cares about me.

Mary turned to Karen and said, “You’d think she’d treat him better, then.”

What? I treat Dick JUST FINE.

Maybe sometimes I get exasperated by Dick’s always dwelling in the land of never-never. In the kitchen, making mincemeat pie with his dad for Thanksgiving, Dick reminds me of Anne of Green Gables, who is always so busy daydreaming she forgets to add flour.

Sometimes I can’t revel in the nice things Dick does (like taking the kids home for bed while I see a movie with my sisters) because the next morning he brings them back to my parents looking like raggedy orphans.

You know how they say that in order to counteract one criticism you have to give seven compliments? It’s like that. Dick does or says one irritating thing, and suddenly the five or six thoughtful things he did just don’t quite make up for it.

Well, today he did one small thing that I think is the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me.

I called him early to remind him to bring me fresh clothes and my glasses, and he told me how Susan, after snuggling with him in our bed this morning, had a little accident. We are not amused, Susan. You can’t just go an entire year accident-free and then have three accidents in two days, including one in MY BED.

Dick got a bit impatient with the long list of things I needed from the house. And the butter and ice cream and bacon I needed from the store. He may even have snapped when I suggested he get a pen and paper to write this all down. Wasn’t I sympathetic that he had to FIND THE BAKING SODA and THROW THE SHEETS DOWN TO THE LAUNDRY ROOM?

So finally he made it to my parents. He told me where everything on my list was, and then he said, “I brought you a Mountain Dew.”

That he would think of this on his own, and actually remember it and try to shrug it off as “they were just sitting there right by the door to the garage” –

I don’t even know how many irritating things that counteracts, Dick. Maybe a million.

Jane