Believe it or not, I always view christmas as the calm before the storm. If christmas were a story the shopping in weeks prior would be the exposition, the 25th the course of action, the three days after christmas the climax, with the denouement happening somewhere around the 30th.

Yep, five long days of “mommy, take this out of the package”, “mom, I need 17 double ‘a’ batteries”, “mommy, you promised you’d play barbies with me”, “mom, I need your credit card so I can download 53 new songs from Itunes onto my new nano”, “mom… mom… mom… mommy?”

Ahhhh, the life of a parent… best job you’ll ever love!

We had a great christmas, though. All my fears and worries amounted to less than nothing, and as we sat in our living room the night of christmas we all agreed it was the best (and most unique) we’d had. And just like that, weeks and weeks of insomnia and stress-triggered overly emotional behavior vanished quicker than jesus juice at a Michael Jackson cub scout sleepover.

I slept like a baby for a whole seven hours before waking to Sydney jumping on me asking to make snow cones with her on her new mickey mouse snow cone maker. And what mighty fine snow cones they were.

On this day..

• Public service announcement. - 2007
• Damn! - 2006