Abigail
2012 Toy of the Year
This year’s Toy of the Year* award goes to the Elf on the Shelf. Congratulations, pragmatic hunk of felt and plastic, you avoided the recycle bin for another year and won our praise, but beware the fickle apostasy of little believers! The ice thins quickly as Abby ages beyond four.
In case you’re not familiar with this crazy, velvet rocking beast, the Elf on the Shelf is a book/toy/video/voodoo doll that makes it kitten-play to extort good behavior out of your Santa-fearing children. The rules state clearly that kids can’t touch the elf, and that the elf reports back to Santa each night on how well each child has behaved. As an adult, all you have to do is remember to move his elven ass to a new location after your kids fall asleep, and you’ll be watching your traumatized minions fall right into line until Christmas morning.
Been good, Abby? Good for you! Santa is pleased with you. Been bad, Jackson? Doh! One of your toys just morphed grotesquely into a lump of anthracite coal. (Note for chronically misbehaving kids and contrarians: put some cash into an Obama-sodomized coal stock like Alpha Natural Resources, Inc., and you just might have the last laugh when you get older.)
The elf’s effectiveness is limited only by a parent’s wickedness. Eat, Abby, the elf is watching. Go to bed, Abby, the elf can hear you. Put down the steak knife, Jackson, and step away from the snitching elf. In hindsight, it may have been an over-reach insisting that Jackson toilet train himself before turning one, in order to get a good report from the elf at the North Pole, but hey… no really permanent harm done and that kid has something to strive for next Christmas.
We pulled Chippy von Chisel (our elf’s name) out in November this year, but next year we might roll the dice and bring him out in July.
* Smart observers of the Moores might complain that we actually had possession of this toy last year. Although this is technically true, we failed to truly grasp Chippy von Chisel’s potential in time to save us from last year’s bitter December of tears. But this year… well… this year that little red bastard is working out swimmingly as a key weapon against the ever-seething tiny person rebellion.
Abby plays soccer
Abby is now an Aztec… a member of the Danvers soccer team. It’s kind of like Manchester United, only a little more serious. Try to find Abby, or a soccer ball for that matter, in the following short film:
Early Halloween Negotiations
I’m not sure on who’s watch things fell apart, but believing as I do that Halloween should have at least a semblance of a frightening feel, I’ve started negotiations with Abigail earlier and earlier in the year in hopes of talking her out of being a princess. She agreed in March to be a pirate, but now that it’s July, talks are breaking down again.
Abby crushes gymnastics class
Cartwheel? Nailed it! Somersault? Bam! Iron cross? Next time.
Adults at our house = FAIL!
With a combined weight of less than 50 pounds, you’d think that a 3-month-old and a 3-year-old would be no match for their larger, presumably experienced parent(s). You’d think that, but you’d be wrong. We are now in little more than a controlled retreat until we can coax these malevolent beasts out of our house.
Good morning, larvae!
Breakfast is more exciting now that the ladybug larvae have moved into their terrarium, a terrarium delivered rather early by Santa’s Fed Ex elves.
Things we won’t mention until much later:
- Several of the larvae made it to Mom’s poppyseed muffins before we could retrieve them. We’re pretty sure we caught most of them, though.
- It’s 70 degrees and humid in the terrarium, but it’s 29 degrees and not so humid outside our house. Looks like this particular crop of larvae won’t be making it to the garden.
Abby conjures a water spout
Bubble rings make perfect, inexpensive, pliable-plastic, unswallowable Christmas gifts, but how the hell do you get one into a stocking?
Another toy arrives!
One of the best things about the soon-to-be bankrupt U.S. mail is that its uneven service works wonders for spreading out your birthday gifts.
If your birthday is… say… on the 15th, and you have friends and relatives that live more than a state away, you can bank on getting presents in the mail until at least the end of the month.
This year, my favorite toy arrived by stork on the 25th. He takes A LOT of batteries and several adults to maintain, but doesn’t anything worthwhile? I can’t wait until he needs his next “re-binking.”
Birthday train table assembly recap
- Time to assemble: 5 hours, 23 minutes.
- Missing parts: honest instructions, 3 screws, 7 AAA batteries, 4 gin martinis, and 1 properly-sized allen wrench.
- Number of Chinese factory workers laughing their asses off at me: at least 1.
- Time until first child fist fight over a train: 18 minutes.
- Time until second child fist fight over a train: 49 minutes.
- Time Abby managed to stay up past her normal bedtime: 1 hour, 17 minutes.
- Chance of another birthday party at our house… ever: a solid 14 percent. Jackson might get one… but only when he turns one. Enjoy the photographic evidence.
T.W.A. – Straight Outta Peabody
Straight outta Peabody… I’m a crazy monkeybaby name-a FreezPop
From the gang called Toddlerz With Asugarhigh.
If I’m yelled at, I musta stole a cookie cat.
Dropped the box and made a mess; now where the dog at?
Chorus
Home Additions!
In order to get Hogan and me farther away from them, my parents are busy digging in, hammering on, and swearing about the soon-to-be finished basement. Actually, my father has few practical skills, so this project, in truth, is a “pay someone else and then pretend you are a foreman” project.
To show my disgust at them for mindlessly blowing several days worth of the tuition money necessary to send me to a private university in a warm weather locale in the year 2026, I’ve just completed my own renovation project. This new addition to my bedroom allows me complete privacy, enhanced protection from Hogan’s dangerous, unpredictable tail wag, and enough interior soundproofing for plausible deniability in the event that someone calls me to go somewhere or to do something that doesn’t perfectly synchronize with my internal toddler clock.
Parenting by police cars and fire trucks
Ultimately, you never know how your kid is going to turn out in the end, but it’s probably important to watch for signs of trouble and to at least try to put the young back on a better path when necessary.
Sometimes it’s easy and nature lobs you soft, underhanded meatball situations to get you to let down your guard. Perhaps you catch your child lifting the family dog’s tail in order to “ring its doorbell.” No problem. That’s a simple “dogs don’t have doorbells, silly child; they live in our houses and listen for our doorbells because they’re wolves on welfare” conversation. Perhaps your child decides she will eat only ginger snap cookies for a month. No problem. Give the dog* all the ginger snap cookies and eventually your child will get hungry enough to eat the gruel you’d rather she ingest.
But other times it’s more difficult. What do you do when your offspring gravitates toward riding in the back of a police car? Do you risk offending the officers present by yanking her screaming and kicking from their squad car?
What is the etiquette for such an extraction? If a two-year-old girl and a thirty-nine-year-old man get into an unscheduled Shin Do Kumate in a squad car, who do you think gets pepper sprayed and tased? How do you explain to your daughter later that obviously she seemed like a greater threat to the officers and that you’re washing her eyes with milk because that’s what the kind paramedics said would make the stinging stop?
Fire trucks, on the other hand, are very comforting signs for parents. Even if your child tosses a would-be, miniature driver crying to the asphalt on her way up to the vehicle’s seat, or if she shoves dismissively an older boy over to ride bitch because he has no f’n clue where the fire is, it’s still a welcome relief to see her riding in the front of a fire truck, rather than the back of a police car.
*Sometimes letting the dog eat several hundred ginger snap cookies all at once can have unintended consequences. It’s better to space them out over time.