Decking the halls and then hitting the Bailey's

Just finished up my Christmas shopping today, woo hoo!!!

These are the little gems I procured while shopping with my tiny evil genius today.

At my hubby's work a well dressed and quite proper woman set my daughter up for her FIRST. AWESOME. JOKE! She has been trying joking lately but most of them have been pretty meh.
To be clear I am not sure how much the woman appreciated it but Sam and the staff at his workplace thought it was as golden, as did I.

The woman looked at Molly in her pigtails and cuteness and said "Wow, don't you have the most beautiful red hair!" to which Molly replied "Yep, I'm a redhead. Better than a redneck!" and then guffawed like a drunk maniac...I am so proud.

Next we popped by Santa's workshop at ye olde mall, where she proceeded to place an order with Santa for "a fish, a duck, a swan and a mermaid" A slightly older man overheard her request and asked if she wanted real animals which earned him a seriously scrunched up nose. "of course not! They would poop all over Santa's bag!" and then as we walked away she gave me a conspiratorial look and said "Mom, that guy doesn't know mermaids aren't real! Do you believe that?"

She was clearly filled with the spirit of the season, and I don't mean that of the psycho shoppers. She hugged EVERYONE we met up with today, invited the woman at the grocery store to come meet our chickens and eat some eggs and told her that the eggs "Just POP! Right out of the Chicken Buts! Can you believe it? It's CRAZY!"

She told me Jeff, our friend who prints my stickers and canvases, was "just wonderful" and on the drive over wondered aloud if she told him she loved him if he would say he loved her back. She told me he is such an amazing guy for "just printing all those stickers and having water and candy in his office." and when we arrived at Jeff's she shyly blurted out "Jeff! I just love you!" and thankfully she WAS rewarded with an "i love you" in return. In the truck on the way home she said, "I am so glad he loved me back, if he didn't I was going to hide in my own pants."

And then the piece de resistance was her "Christmas Song", a real gem. After a day of shopping on the drive home Molly asked me if she could sing me a Christmas song. And now I share it will all of you in all it's yuletide glory.

"Cats eat birds, and dogs eat birds.
They grab up the birds and they crunch, crunch crunch.
Kittens eat birds, yep bi-i-irds,
they all eat birds and they chew them all up.
They chew chew chew chew cheee--ee-ew
What comes next? Well they go outside
and of course they take a po-oo-ooop"

Merry Christmannukaholidaykwanzayule.

If your children are a reflection of you, I am a pantless smart ass

Evidence of my smartassery. I love to decorate my pets.

A few weeks ago Molly proved to me once again it is better for us to have dinner parties at home. We have only lived in the woods now for a few months, but already she is only a loincloth and some fuzzy cartoon singing friends away from being a vine-swinging, yodelling half monkey.

Admittedly dinner was a three meat carnivorous feast fit only for cave people, and so maybe she went meat stupid, I can only assume at this point. But immediately after dinner Molly asked politely to be excused, then proceeded to stand in front of the table, rip off her dinner cape - yes your read that right - then her shirt, then her everything else, and start mooning everyone and doing a little naked dance while yelling "Party Naked! Party Naked! Party Naked!"

Thankfully I wasn't hosting Martha Stewart and her entourage on this fine evening. I think they would have taken one look at the carelessly hung Christmas lights in the yard and hightailed it out before dinner - or I, or Molly's nude dancing - had a chance to offend.

So with that little performance as the beginning, we head into the dreaded Christmas season. Up until the ginger beast was born, Sam and I were unified by -among other things- a mutual distaste for all things Christmas. When Molly came into the world we have been slowly letting Christmas eek into our lives with every more consciously human year. But we try really really hard not to let her get all caught up in the consumer crapness after her her third Christmas, when I bought her a piano and Sam bought her a baby quad and her family members seemingly bought out a mall and she just drove the quad straight at the piano and played music in a catatonic state and refused to come down from her quad/piano hybrid vehicle to even look at the other presents. So after that we have put a bit of a simmer on Christmas psychosis.

As soon as the snow began to fall I slipped into one of those "I will never.." hypocrite things that a mom thinks she will never do. And then does. See what she didn't know until having a child is that using a mythical fat man that B&Es your house and steals your cookies as a pre-Christmas threat is actually brilliance. 

So as Molly and I travel around making merry and sampling way too much other people food she can tend to turn into a raging ginger psychopath and I've found myself telling her that I was going to tell Santa if she didn't stop being naughty. Once again she found a way to prove to me that it is only a matter of time - by which I mean 3-4 weeks - before she is smarter than me. 

It started when I decided to decorate the living shit out of our living room. First attempt, I was getting a little too merry with the rum and eggnog all by myself, got tired of decorating and just went with dancing around to Culture Club with a garland boa until I tripped over some ornaments. Second attempt I just decorated Kevin Costner to look like a garland lion, and he looked freaking amazing. And third time's a charm, I got my shit together, and accomplished some real decorating.

Isn't he Costneriffic?

I crept in after decorating to tell her to come see, and I found her watching a cartoon where a hippo was on fire,annoying the living shit out of my daughter who said plainly, "Idiot! Stop drop and roll!" and let out an exasperated sigh.

Then she came downstairs, held her hands close to her heart like some orphan in a made-for-tv movie, and yelled "Mom! It's SPLENDID! (Splendid? WTF?) Santa is going to LOVEITSOOOOMUCH!!" making all my failed attempts, and giving up my Christmas loathing, totally worth it.

The next morning I found her on her Kermit phone; "Sh, mom. I'm talking to Santa" and when she got off the phone she said in an oh-so-serious tone. "Mom, I have just been talking to Santa, and HE told ME I could be naughty OR nice this year." ...well then.

Apparently she gets an OK from the big guy

Wishing you all a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Fantastic Kwanzaa or whatever floats your boat.

xoxo love,
Lucy D., Sam, Molly, KevinCostner, Oliver McPoot, Lubba Tub, Meuwford, MeowMeow and of course, Star Kitty.