I walked in the kitchen and saw him crouching down, holding a piece of candy up to the side of the fish tank.

"Um, what the hell are you doing?"

"Check it out, if you hold the peppermint bark this way it makes him mad. But if you turn it this way or this way, he totally ignores it."

"You’re a freak, Kevin. Leave that poor fish alone."

Four scattered things:

1. He seems to be making a deliberate effort to make himself sound as natural and grown up as possible. So instead of Yes he says "Sure" (often with a shrug) and instead of No he says "Nnnnope." But sometimes the word "sure" doesn’t really fit, especially the way he says is like "Okay, why the hell not?" It makes it sound like he’s either totally guessing or is humoring you.

ME (noticing a puddle on the floor): Woah, did you tinkle on the rug?
HIM: Sure!

2. Tonight at bedtime he announced that we are a flashlight. I was apparantly the lightbulb and he was the "badoodoos" (batteries), and when we hug the light comes on. Call me a hormonal dork and a half, but that has to be the sweetest, coolest thing I’ve ever heard in my life. Until he told me that I was old and died and the flashlight "probly needs a new lightbulb." I said, "Oh I don’t want to die, I don’t like this game." So he fixed it. "No, you not died, you you you– are a happy lightbulb."
That got him two extra minutes of huggingness before bed.

3. Right now he really likes descriptive words like gorgeous and giant and little tiny itty bitty. Kevin took him to Lowe’s earlier and when they got back he said that they had to stop for a long time and read the carpet samples. You know those big bound things of carpet samples they have? Nicolaus said they were "Giant books about rugs." He also wins points with people telling them "Oh wow, you have gorgeous hair. Your eyes are pretty, I like them very much!" In fact, he has become super complimentary in general. At random times throughout the evening he’ll tell Kevin, "I’m glad you came home to see me, Daddy."

4. Earlier I overhead this conversation.
KEVIN: Do you want to go with me in the truck?
NICOLAUS: Nope. I going to stay here.
KEVIN: Come on, let’s go in the truck!
NICOLAUS: Mama can come with us.
KEVIN: No, we’re going to leave Mama here. We don’t like her.
NICOLAUS: I like Mama!
KEVIN: You DO??
NICOLAUS: I like her very much. I love Mama.
KEVIN: You love Mama? Even though she smells like a goat?
NICOLAUS: Sure! I love Mama.
KEVIN: Ew, yuck, but she stinks! She smells like a stinky goat. Mama is nasty.
NICOLAUS: Nooooooo. Mama is PRETTY. She is nice. I like her very much.

I swear to whatever you believe in that I didn’t coach him or pay him to say any of that. Do you really think if I had any influence over what people say and do that I’d be married to someone who tells our child that I smell like a goat?

I just walked in the kitchen because I heard the distinct sound of the top coming off of the fish tank. Again. This time, Nicolaus was standing on a chair and holding the following objects:
* A tiny plastic collander that goes to his play kitchen
* A toy wooden screwdriver
* A small flashlight

Sweet LORD what are you doing?

I just trying to put that wish in that bowl, I just want to LOOK at him, he’s little, tiny, he’s my little tiny WISH. I just want to LOOK at him in that – in that bowl, in that hole bowl. With my flashlight.

No word on what the screwdriver was for. I am now officially taking bets on how long the fish lasts.

Ha! He’s napping! Now it is I who has the upper hand. Until he wakes up, probably in another 15 minutes.

This Christmas was pretty cool from the whole parenting/loving family/weather standpoint. No one brought up politics in an obnoxious way, and there were no major meltdowns. Both of my brothers had clean hair at the main festivities. But Kevin, Nicolaus, and I did have a cold and there was a little too much hoopla and my grandmother called me fat in front of everyone and my brother’s visit was way too short. So I give it a 7.

The neatest thing was seeing how much Nicolaus got out of giving and receiving gifts. We did our best to keep the focus on people rather than things, but let’s face it, things are pretty cool too. We tried making most of the gifts this year — even though it didn’t come out any cheaper, it was a lot more fun. So, here’s the list.

For my mom –
a handmade journal cover, made from felt with beads added on. She loves stars and moons and stuff. And on the inside I put quotes about the moon and stars from important literary figures like Shakespeare and The Beatles.

Also, Nicolaus painted and put beads on this cross for her. Funniest quote of the holiday season was my brother whispering, “Why did he give you a CROSS?” And then saying “Oh that’s right! I forgot you believe in Jesus.”

For my dad – Nicolaus painted a tiny guitar. for him, and Kevin and I made this clock out of wood and paper clay.. It is a very inside thing. It represents the theory of human evolution that my dad first introduced me to, one that Kevin and I both think deserves a lot more consideration. Basically the idea is that some apes went to the sea shore and hung out for tens of thousands of years, where they began the process of evolving into aquatic mammals (like dolphins, whales, and seals). Then something happened and they moved away from the seas into the plains and became humans. So the clock is a chimpanzee-like ape looking out at the water, thinking hmmm… I wonder…. Basically you have an ape, plus water, then you add time… We’re weird, you knew that, right?

For my uncle and my brother the Texas New Yorker – I made iPod covers out of handmade felt. These pictures were taken before I was completely finished, but you get the idea. I’m not sure how much of a hit these were, they are very wooly looking and odd. But so are my brother and my uncle.

For my brother who is not a stoner but who sometimes smokes the marijuana (I’m told there is a difference) — Two bracelets made out of handmade felt. He immediately lost one of them (NOT stoned), but loves the remaining one.

For my mother-in-law, we bought a solid green sisal rug at Lowes and used bleach to sort of un-paint a design on it. Now I want one for myself. Nicolaus painted a bird house for her. Dude, that kid ROCKS at painting stuff. I figured out the key to having a child paint stuff that looks really good is to limit the color choices. If all the colors look pretty together, you really can’t go wrong. So he painted up a storm, and when we were done with the birdhouse he painted his own arms and stomach, all with periwinkle house paint. Now THAT’s some parenting right there.

For my father-in-law, I took Nicolaus to the craft store and we went to the aisle with the little wooden cutouts. I told him we were picking out things that Papaw likes. So he picked: A boat, a truck, a watermelon slice, some pliers, a fish, a rabbit, a turtle, and a frog. He also wanted to get some other random stuff like a cat and a volkswagon beetle, but I didn’t put them in the basket. FOCUS, kid, we’re only getting things that Papa likes. You think Papaw likes that crap? More rock and roll parenting. Then we came home and I let him use my fancy watercolors to paint them because I suck and it didn’t occur to me to spring for a 99 cent box of children’s watercolors. Again, so long as I controlled the color options, everything came out looking awesome.

What else… that’s all I can think of right now. Oh and we cooked a ton of stuff, all pecan-related for everyone except my grandmother because I don’t cook for her because she’s mean about my cooking. Kevin made pralines and I made yummmmy pecan cookies (recipe to come). Then we gave my dad a ton of shelled pecans, and gave the rest of the unshelled ones to Kevin’s dad along with a kickass pecan cracker.

Meanwhile, Kevin and Nicolaus made me a necklace because oh my god are they the cutest?. I love it – I’ll post pictures of it later on. I wasn’t as creative with Kevin’s gift. Nicolaus and I wanted to get him this model truck, but it was so expensive. So we found a place nearby that sold little bitty ones for like $5. Nicolaus picked out a light yellow old timey truck, I wanted to get the red one but I didn’t argue because, you know, parenting. I had to make up for letting him use toxic paint somehow, plus I wanted him to feel invested in this whole Christmas thing.

Whew, sorry – that was way too long. I’m going to click post and then add the rest of the pictures in just a second. I need a snack first.

I keep waiting for the moment when I have like an hour to concentrate on posting all the great exciting things that happened this week, but clearly that isn’t going to happen. So instead, I’m going to do little driveby postings and maybe we’ll end up with some assembly of things that look like Christmas.

Right this second Nicolaus is sitting up on a chair, talking to his new pet fish, a Christmas gift from my in-laws. He’s trying to prop an envelope up against the front of the tank to make a bed for the wish. I’m more a little bit grateful to the fish for taking some of the conversational pressure off of me for a few minutes. He does stop to ask me things like “What oatmeal means, Mama?” but for the most part, he’s talking to the fish while I surf the web. Ah, a peaceful morning.

Every time I walk in the kitchen lately, he’s up on that chair about to do something with the fish. Yesterday he had the top off and was poised to pour a packet of microwave popcorn into the bowl when I walked in and startled him. He sat down and said, “I’m just lookin’ at my wish.”
So we had talk number one about not opening the top or feeding things to the fish, especially not butter-flavored things that require use of the microwave.

And a few minutes ago when I came in, he was pressing the kitchen timer up against the side of the bowl. I have no idea what that was about, but when I walked in the room he threw the timer down and said, “I’m just lookin’ at him.”

Hmmm… Between taunting the fish with a kitchen timer and this Christmas morning photo…

I have to wonder if we haven’t done a very bad thing by giving him a pet of his very own.

More in a sec, he’s trying to blow soap bubbles into the tank. That can’t be good.