From December 2011

20 years late but I'm off to visit a college campus. In my defense, I still dress like I did when I was 18.

Parenting protip: when changing a dirty diaper, don't stop to scratch your nose. Trust me on this one.

With enormous effort I got Relia to her swim lesson. We woke up a cranky Felix. We braved terrible cold temps. We worked our way through bad traffic. We even found a spot in the terribly over-filled parking lot at the Y. All this with just enough time to get inside to change her and get in the pool. Only . . . when I went to get her out of the van I discovered that we had left the bag with the swimsuit at home. Ugh.

Spending a good chunk of the morning trying to remember some French Christmas carols from high school. Took me nearly a half hour to get to 'Noel Nouvelet'.

Love this wet cool morning. I'll take four more months of this for winter, please.

We need an 'It Gets Better' video for fathers with four year old 'princesses'.

Relia is upset that none of her grandparents celebrate Kwanza.

Just caught the last part of 'Land Before Time'. I thought, hey, they should think of a making a sequel to this.

We've been watching a fair amount of 'Spiderman and his Amazing Friends' on Netflix. If we have a boy, Relia wants to name him 'Magneto'. I have told her 'no'.

Frankly, I'd be quite happy with a non-white Christmas. After the last few years I could use the mildest winter in Minnesota history.

Oh Target, your Chocolate Mint Indulgent Holiday Drink is fantastic!

Sarah is making french toast and we were watching her put the 'batter' together. She added nutmeg and Relia wanted to know why. I said "to make it taste like Connecticut". (CT is known as the Nutmeg State.) This prompted her to say things like "It sure tastes like Connecticut" and "I've never eaten Connecticut before". Careful what you say...

I wish Santa had given the kids an extra hour of sleep this morning. Maybe he could team up with the Sandman next year . . .

I'm loving Felix running around the house pushing his new truck!

One by one Relia is slowly revealing all of the things she did downstairs before waking us this morning . . .

Felix decided to use his new dump truck to transport his cup of milk. And well, short story shorter, it made me want to cry.

Things they never tell you about parenting: you will have long, involved and *interesting* conversations about your children's poop.