There were too many hilarious moments to recount over Christmas, and when I say hilarious I don’t just mean it in the haha wow, funny sense, but also in the haha, oh my God my family is crazy and we might as well have spent three days running over each other with trucks sense. You know, hilarious.

Highlights include:
1. My grandmother announcing that she would only come to my house for dinner Christmas Eve if she cooked food and brought it over, because whatever I was going to cook was certainly going to be inadequate and she’ll be damned if she’s going to spend Christmas Eve driving around looking for an IHOP that’s open so she can get a decent meal afterwards. Merry Christmas, grandma!

2. My brother calling my grandmother classless and rude and a whole bunch of other things that were just plain cool. He rocks. He may not ever call his sister, not even on her birthday, but wow. He really stood up for me this weekend.

3. My grandmother and her gentleman friend David expressing concern that Graham is not very responsive. I want you to picture these people sternly holding a baby and saying, “Hello, Graham.” in a tone as though he is an ambassador from another country and it is certainly a pleasure to meet him. So no, he didn’t smile or coo at them, he stared at them and drooled. Concerned that “You need to have him tested”, they went and got a toy that lights up and plopped it in front of him. He looked at it like “Yeah…? And…?” and he drooled some more. They exchanged pitying glances because my child is obviously a moron.

My mom, unaware of the highly scientific infant intelligence and aptitude testing that was taking place in my dining room, swooped in and ooohed at her grandson in that melodious way that normal human nonrobots speak to children. He immediately lit up in a wave of arms and legs and little baby giggles.

Data inconclusive. They still think we need to have him tested. I think I should do it. I’m going to take him to the doctor right away and tell them that I’m worried because as far as I can tell, my baby is totally illiterate.

4. Me ruining Christmas dinner. There was a misunderstanding about what time we were expected to arrive, so we were 30 minutes late. My grandmother announced that Christmas dinner was RUINED. My brother came very close to throwing all the turkey away since it was ruined. But then he remembered that my mom cooked it and he loves my mom. REALLY MOM, HE DOES.

5. He and my mom have some issues. To work out. It seems.

6. Same for my uncle and me. And my uncle and my brother, and now probably Kevin and my uncle, on account of all the hilarious things Kevin said about my uncle’s mother. Did you follow that? Uncle’s mother = my grandmother = mean lady from items 1-4.

7. We’re all rushing and running to sit down at Christmas dinner so dinner won’t be ruined even more. We all sit down. There, ahhh, we can eat. But wait! Someone is missing. Someone quiet… someone crAzy. My Aunt waited until that exact moment to step out for a smoke. Because she either a very bizarre woman who misses all social cues, or because she is a brilliant mastermind who is trying to push my grandmother over the edge. Either way, it was awesome.

8. Nicolaus – remember Nicolaus? Christmas is really all about the children you know – takes forevvvvvverrrrrr to open presents. Every time he opens one, he wants to stop and play with it for 45 minutes. “Look Nicolaus! Another present! Want to open another present??” He looks at you like, naw, I’m good, and goes back to playing. Next year is seriously going to be the year of “Oh mother! Thanks ever so much for the shiny red apple!” because DUDE. Too many toys. It’s neat that he’s so grateful and wants to savor each and every gift, but if we’d let him work at his own pace we’d still be sitting by the tree waiting for him to oh my god just open another present already.

9. My dad gave me a motherfucking D70.

10. My little brother Tony (who my parents finally admit is probably a stoner, although he DID SHOWER before coming over Christmas Eve so now I don’t know what to think, maybe I have judged him unfairly) is so beautifully oblivious to all of the emotional wreckage around him that he kept hugging people and telling them what a great Christmas this was, and how cool it is to have all the family in town together like this. I swear to God I’m going to make him a shirt that says, “Wait… What?”

11. A Christmas miracle! A D70!

12. For two days I didn’t even touch it. Could not comprehend this camera being mine.

13. Nicolaus didn’t get to meet Santa because we suck and waited until Friday to take him and when we got there, the wait was over two and a half hours. We were punished for our parental failing by being trapped for 45 minutes in Northpark Mall, which has recently undergone major renovations to make it suck worse than any mall has ever sucked in the history of mankind making malls that suck. All of the stores are closed or coming soon, except for a few places that charge $47 for a smoothie and a bagel. And I almost peed on myself because A) all of this was so dang funny and B) they do a really good job of hiding the bathrooms behind unlabelled doors that are on the opposite side of the mall from where they appear on the map.

I’m going to stop now before I make my mom cry. Sorry mom. But yeah, the holiday was long and hard and intense. We learned a lot about each other and about the true meaning of Christmas, which is that you should not waste precious time and energy on fighting or dredging up old wounds when really that energy is better spent focusing on the ones you love and on buying them really cool cameras.

It’s still dark. I’m looking at your round face sleeping next to me. It’s hard to believe that one day you won’t be a baby. We won’t always huddle together on cool nights, you won’t always squirm against me with your dimpled hands and sleepy smile that comes and goes, as though you’re laughing at some tiny private joke in your sleep. You’re wearing the stripey pajamas that we call your prison uniform, and you look a little like a miniature drunk passed out in my bed. This had better not be foreshadow, young man, because I assure you I have no desire to come and get you out of – what do they call it? The cell where they put all the drunks? Whatever, you’d better not even know what they call it. Even so, you are a gorgeous little drunk and I’m honestly writing this to stop myself from waking you up just to see if I can make you throw your head back and laugh.

Today you are three months old. One day you’ll be three years old. Crazy, right? Even crazier, one day you’ll be 13 and you’ll find me like so totally uncool. Of course teenagers still use valley girl talk – if they don’t, just kill me now because I don’t want to live in a world where teenagers don’t go all like oh my GAH. At 13 I bet you’ll still smile and laugh a lot, unless you go through that dark gloomy teenager thing, which I promise to totally respect even though hahahhahaaaaaaaaa. Sorry, but it’s a ridiculous act because you were a smiley, happy, easy going baby, and the whole world knows you’re funny and sweet because guess what? I’ve been keeping an online journal since before you were born. Happy birthday!

One day you’ll be 30, and I’ll be all old and stuff. And maybe you’ll have a wife, and maybe she’ll look at you in the soft light right before dawn and watch you sleeping next to her, and wonder what you’re dreaming about when you smile like that. Waffles, maybe? Or your father speaking whale to you. I’m sure she’ll have her own guesses, but those are mine.

Right now, you’re three months old and things are simple. You taught me to trust you early on, with your peaceful way of making me learn to relax, let go, slow down, don’t worry about how much or what time or how many diapers or any of it.

Yeah, okay, Zoloft.

But there’s something else, something about you, this quiet, sweet groove you have. I used to think I needed a huge number of kids just like that lady with the hair everyone makes fun of. I had this intense need in me to fill our house up with noise and love. When I met your dad and we discussed kids and the future he said he wanted one or two kids. I said I wanted ten. He married me anyway, and I secretly hoped we’d compromise at four. That may not sound like much of a compromise but dude, I wanted TEN. Four seemed pretty fair.

After your brother was born, I scaled back my ambitions a bit, but almost immediately started needing needing another baby. In a very deep, mentally unstable way. It felt like something important was missing, even though I loved him as big as the whole dang world, the love I had for him made me greedy for more. I needed more babies, more round faces, more things growing in my tummy. NOW. It took so long to get pregnant with him though, I worried that the next baby might never get here. Now here you are and I can’t believe the bigness of your presence. For the first time in my life, I feel satisfied. The restlessness for more is gone, not because oh gosh, having babies is too hard and I don’t want more… but simply because there’s something about you that has filled in the lines.

Ask your doctor how Zoloft can cure YOU of the desire to end up on TV as the crazy lady with 14 babies.

I really don’t think it’s the drugs. I felt this way before we left the hospital. The week after you were born was the best week of my life, a week where I realized every minute how insanely lucky I am to have what I have. Like seriously so totally ohmigod lucky.

Leaky boobs
A-leaky leaky
Anoint my bed
Acreaky creaky

Something I left out of the beautiful Christmastime Wienermobile story because it was getting too long. We went into my parents’ shop to wait for my mom. My uncle was in the middle of teaching a violin lesson. He paused to say hello, and I told Nicolaus “Tell Uncle Looie what you saw outside.” figuring he’d spend one second saying “Wienermobile” and we’d laugh for 2 seconds, and then we’d leave him alone, taking up only 3 seconds of the lesson.

Nicolaus took a deep breath, “I just saw –”

My uncle waited patiently for Nicolaus to finish. “I saw. Outside? I just. WE. Just.” long pause, “We just saw a… vehicle.” Pause, “A car. Shaped.” Pause. Finally, he spit it all out,”We just saw a car that was SHAPED ‘ike a hotdog.”

My uncle jumped up, “THE WIENERMOBILE?” He ran to the window. “It is! It’s the Wienermobile!!”

Is it a guy thing?

“Hold me Mama and see what I do!” I wrap my arms around him. But instead of cuddling he makes horrible “Splatch splich Pchh” noises and wriggles himself out of my arms onto the floor. He giggles, “You spilled me, Mama! I made a huge mess all over the floor.” He writhes around on the rug and laughs before working his way back onto the couch to start over.

He’s pretending to be liquid. This has been going on for almost an hour, and it is definitely the weirdest pretend game I’ve ever played. “Pour me, Mama! Pour me into a cup.”

Goofagoof. It started when he watched Monsters, Inc. I was worried it would scare him, but we can’t find the Nemo DVD. I was desperate. The weird thing is that Finding Nemo freaks him out a lot more than a movie about monsters scaring little kids. Anyway, there’s a part of Monsters, Inc where a big slug-looking monster melts down into metal grating on the sidewalk. He thinks that is HILARIOUS. Which, it’s pretty cute. But not like crack up laughing funny. Definitely not crack up laughing and pretend to be liquid for two days funny.

Yikes. I thought I’d have time to write about one more Nicolaus thing for the day, but holy lord he is wired. Jumping on the couch and laughing and yelling in an ultra high-pitched voice “I splashed up out of that toilet drain, didn’t I? That’s where your ‘iquid was Mama! I was in that TOILET DRAIN MAMA! And I splashed UP!”

Because it isn’t really fun until you’ve incorporated tinkle and poop into the game somehow.