Christmas Eve with Alice

Happy Christmas Eve! What a lively and yet very ordinary day! If you'll bear with me, I would like to document it in exquisite detail here. How have I come to accept life with Alice as so dull and ordinary? When I take the time to step back and marvel at it all it's easy to fall in love with my life again. Here's how today went:

7:30 AM
Alice wakes up this morning with a morbid fear of the toilet. She insists it will get "too full" if anyone uses it and we'll have to use the "pyunger-thingy" to make it go down again. She decides that she will "hode it inside" indefinitely. Bobby leaves for work and Alice starts doing some serious squirming up and down the hall. I can see the fight in her mind between her desire to pee somewhere clean and her fear that everything will go horribly wrong if she does. The situation grows urgent. I imagine scenarios where logic wins over fear, and then I imagine deep-cleaning the entire hall carpet. I decide to offer her another choice: the bucket.

Bobby and I are odd people. Very odd. For my "bridal shower" we decided we should stock up on 72-hour-kit supplies. Our families humored us and showered us with the likes of flashlights, emergency blankets, non-perishable food, and a port-a-loo. The port-a-loo is a large bucket with a lidded potty seat attached to the top. It was a hilarious gift at the time. I didn't realize I would actually use it in any situation short of Armageddon. Well, we've used it several times in a few different situations. When you need a toilet and the usual one is not available, it can feel like Armageddon.

Alice immediately loves the idea of the bucket. It doesn't have water in it, so there's no chance of "filling it too full." It's a bit tipsy, though, for a kid her size, so I help her balance on top. Success! When she's done, I just dump the contents into the potty and rinse with hot, soapy water. No big deal.

9:00 AM
Alice turns to my tummy and says, "I wanna feel my baby brudder kick! Is he awake?" Turns out, he is stirring a little. No one but me has felt Zurg move yet. He's a real mover, but completely shy whenever Alice or Bobby have tried to feel him. Can he feel the heat of their hands? Whatever it is, I am doubtful and hopeful at the same time.

Alice says, "Wake up!" and he kicks hard enough that I can see my belly move. I put her hand right on that spot and tell her to say it again. He kicks again right on cue. She is amazed and amused. He kicks 3-4 times for her this way. I tell her he's saying "hi" and that he's happy to meet her. She giggles and says, "I yike 'im too."

10:30 AM
I start our Christmas Eve dessert: chocolate pudding pie! I decide midway that I want a key lime pie as well (I keep hand-squeezed lime juice in the freezer for just such occasions), then I hear Alice in the office-that-will-be-Zurg's-room chirp, "Hey! You put clothes in here!" Yes, I had just filled a chest of drawers with 0-3 month baby boy clothes that morning. Sure, sure, it's WAY too early for most people to start prepping a kid's room. I'm weird that way. Anyway, she squeals to hear that they are clothes for her baby brother. I could have left it at that, but remembering our little sibling bonding moment earlier, I figure we can make this a fun activity too. I tell her they will also fit her baby right now if she wants to try it. Of course!

She literally grabs as many clothes as her arms can hold and runs off to find her babies. She picks outfits for each of her babies and we dress them together. Then she runs back to the dresser for more! She finds a baby hat that reads "Benevolent Dictator" (an amusing gift from her Aunt Erin) and puts it on the baby. Then herself. She runs off to check it out in her full-length mirror (a generous loan from the Bair's house) and gasps, "It matches!" The red hat clearly coordinates with her red pajamas and she can't be more delighted. She decides she could do with a new outfit, too, and strips off the PJs in favor of a teeny, green jungle onesie. It doesn't fit well so she decides to pick out some of her own play clothes. I head back to the kitchen to work on the pies.

A few minutes later, Alice prances into the kitchen completely decked out in a red long-sleeved turtleneck, red cotton pants, the red baby hat, and a pair of white socks on her hands. "Yook, Mommy! My fancy wain suit! Now da wain can't get me wet." She runs off again to play with her babies.

11:30 AM
Alice runs to me concerning an urgent potty break of the other sort. This time I put a little water in the bottom of the bucket to prevent sticking. I was not prepared for how much she had been holding, however. *sigh* Ten minutes later, she hops off and I'm left with a very, very big mess and a pot of burned chocolate pudding on the stove.

"Dumb! Dumb! Dumb! Why did I ever MENTION this stupid bucket?!" I silently curse myself for being so lazy. "I didn't want to scrub a carpet, so now I get to scrub a bucket, a toilet, AND a bathtub. Just great." Alice dances around simply excited to see the bucket "get a bath." Ugh.

12:00 PM
I scrub everything and sanitize everything else (especially myself!) before starting over on the chocolate pudding pie. Then I notice I'm a few key ingredients short for the key lime pie and even dinner itself. I feel guilty shopping on holidays. I hate making people work all day just so I can pick up a can of sweetened condensed milk and a sack of potatoes last-minute. The parking lot is chock-full when we get there. The employees inside still look happy, though, and some of my guilt melts away. Alice gets a free cookie and happily follows me all around the store looking for the few items we "need" to complete our meal for tonight. She doesn't beg for anything. She doesn't even whine about wanting to touch things. I'm amazed! I pray many thanks as we slip out of the store in record time.

12:30 PM
Home again, home again, we see Bobby has gotten off of work early. Alice can hardly contain herself! She's been a real Daddy's girl of late. They play while I finish the pies, then we all get dinner into the crockpot. Alice needs to pee again. I tell her that the bucket is STILL taking a bath (i.e. soaking in Oxi-Clean) and it will be out-of-commission indefinitely. She squirms up and down the hall in indecision. Tired of the drama, I take her to the potty and hold her on it until she finally lets go. Then she gets lots of praise and a surprise treat for being so brave. Bobby also gives her a full demonstration of how a toilet works. He pours extra water into the bowl and shows her that it can't overflow. Then he explains that even if the hole were clogged, one whole flush would not spill out the top. She remains calm and curious throughout the demonstration. We cross our fingers and hope it works.

1:30 PM
Quiet time. I love this part of the day :)

3:30 PM
Alice falls asleep at the very end of quiet time. We decide to wake her up so she'll go to bed on time later. That task proves more difficult than we anticipate. Talking, singing, bouncing on the bed, rubbing her back, clapping, loud kissy noises, and real rib-tickling barely cause her to stir. Bobby and I figure she's in a deep sleep that she probably needs right now, so we settle down on Alice's floor for a raucous game of Hen Berta. Success is entirely based on luck, but it gives you the semblance of strategy, so it's easy to get noisy about it. And we are LOUD this time. Eventually, she stirs and wakes up interested in playing the game with us. We show her how to play and she decides "I too busy to pyay wight now." Hm.

3:45 PM
Alice uses the toilet successfully without complaint as long as Mommy is in the room with her. Woo hoo!

4:00 PM
We eat dinner: Burgandy beef and veggies, oranges, cucumbers, and grape juice. Alice then invites us to a birthday party in Zurg's room where we dress up her babies in Zurg's clothes. She's getting pretty good at this stuff.

5:00 PM
Special Family Home Evening event. We watch "Joy to the World" and pause to explain things along the way. She seems to get it, then get bored after the shepherds find Christ in the stable. We press on with the movie anyway. Oh well. She has decades ahead of her to appreciate the finer points of the Christmas story. We enjoy chocolate pudding pie and key lime pie for dessert.

6:00 PM
Alice in the tub for an hour. We literally play together that long. These are some of my favorite times as a family when we're just hanging out and talking and playing and not hurrying/waiting to do something else. We are all in a good mood.

7:00 PM
Play in Alice's room together as a family. Alice plays Hen Berta by her own rules while Bobby and I play Lego robots. I haven't had this much fun in a looooooong time. All the imaginary stories come together and feed off of each other. I laugh a lot and I laugh hard.

7:30 PM
Get Alice ready for bed. Brush teeth, Daddy makes up a story (she rarely asks for a book story anymore), song, snuggle with Mommy, then she requests all of her newly-dressed babies to join her in bed.

8:00 PM
Quiet time again. Ahhhhh.

See? An ordinary and yet very unordinary day. None of this will happen again just like this, though many themes will certainly pop up again. I love my life. I love my family. It's the strangest little life I've ever lived.