We are all finally feeling pretty healthy for the first time since the school year started, just in time for winter break.  Dee Dee, Audio, and I hung out on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and their mom had Thursday and Friday off.  It snowed a fair amount on the first three days of the week, but I can’t really leave the girls alone inside while I go out to shovel.  Earlier this season, I’ve run out and shoveled little bits at a time, when I know that they can watch me and I can be in eye contact with them through the windows.  But, it’s been pretty cold this week and I don’t like getting dressed in my winterwear to go out to shovel, only to be called back inside to settle a disagreement over what cartoon to watch for the seventeenth time, or to repeat that they cannot have any candy.  So, I’ve been practicing shoveling in the dark after my wife gets home. 

Each of the girls will get more presents for Christmas this year than I received throughout my entire childhood.  None of the gifts are incredibly special.  In fact, I don’t worry about the gifts they get cluttering up our house for more than a year or so because they won’t be around terribly long. When I was a kid, I’d get things like clothes and candy that were different sorts of temporary-use gifts.  But I’d also get things like baseball gloves and pocketknives that I still own.  For the most part, the presents that the girls are getting are dolls and toys that might last until next Christmas, but probably won’t.  They’ll break, get lost, or just be set aside and forgotten. At first, I had a hard time with the idea of giving the girls such frivolous presents.  But now I understand that it’s the excitement of unwrapping the gift, not having the gift and I just feel bad about the amount of plastic that we’re adding to the grand pile. 

Presents aside, our family isn’t big on Christmas.  My wife and I do try to give the girls what their peers would see as a normal life.  We celebrate most of the holidays that the other kids at school celebrate, just like we make time to watch whatever movies or shows the kids at school are talking about, and even give the girls fast food, once in a while.  But it will be nice to feel healthy and have a week, or so, off of work and school to hang out together.    And then, back at it until spring break!