Oh yeah.

That's why I had kids.

P.S. To Stitchy: You don't have kids yet, do you? Because if you have them solely in order to obtain the fruits of their labor, and you aren't, say, the Osmonds, you're in for a sad disillusionment, my friend.

Peculiar Holiday Traditions From Our Family to Yours

1. Stomach flu. Somehow, my kids always seem to contract viruses that involve doing unspeakable things in the toilet in the two weeks preceding Christmas. Somehow, they always manage to give those viruses to me. Somehow my husband always manages to remain unscathed (and not very sympathetic, I might add).

2. Two Christmas trees. I’ve probably talked about this before, but we have two full-size Christmas trees in our house. One, in the family room, is everyone’s tree. The kids help decorate and it is completely un-choreographed. Any ornament that is rated E for everyone can go on, wherever the decorator wants to put it.



(Since the twins like to put, on average, five ornaments per branch, one right on top of one another, this requires massive amounts of forbearance on Tom’s part. We sometimes rearrange ornaments that have “fallen” after the kids are out of the room.) The living room tree is Tom’s baby. He decides how it will be decorated – silver organza ribbon? blue crystal lights? jewel-toned glass beads? – and carries it through. The kids provide limited help, but are closely micromanaged supervised and only touch the unbreakable stuff.

3. Untraditional Christmas Eve “dinner.” We’ve abandoned the whole notion of having some sort of sit-down Christmas Eve dinner. One year, we had margaritas and Mexican food. This year, we’ll probably go with abundant appetizers and finger foods, although I’m lobbying hard for Chinese from my favorite local restaurant.

4. Involuntary commitment to a mental hospital. It seems that we’ve developed a new and heartwarming tradition in recent years, whereby a family member stops taking her meds and ends up in the “hospital” with schizoid psychosis with catatonic and/or paranoid tendencies. The only thing worse than having a family member committed the week before Christmas is when the crazy-ass insurance company lets 'em out a couple of days later, only marginally improved. Note to self: Next year, deck the halls with lots of lithium. And pop a little Prozac in the eggnog for the rest of us.

Liza wants me to post this

Here's one way to have a very merry holiday. I'm not entirely convinced this site is for real, but what the hey. (Besides, I saw through my stat-tracker that someone actually got to my site by searching "XXL boobs." I can't decide whether to be deeply troubled or highly flattered.)