all I want for christmas

All I want for Christmas is an iPod, a new battery for my laptop that will hold a charge, wireless internet, a new blender, food steamer, Nigella’s old cookbook How to Eat and my new platinum wedding band.  My list is a wish list because Eli and I are not getting each other presents this year.

Eli wants a garage, a limited edition car that I can’t remember the name of—no, not a model, an actual automobile-- the wood to finish our hardwood floor project, a helicopter, and his new wedding band.  His list is a wish list filled with things he will probably never get ever because he has a greedy imagination.  The other night we were talking about the things we’d like to eventually save up for and I was telling him how I’m going to try to set aside enough money to buy my laptop battery next month.  It costs sixty whole dollars and I just don’t have that kind of scratch for something so expensive.  Eli, getting into the spirit, started talking about this car that he would like to buy that costs almost a whole year of his salary and in that moment, listening to him talk, I realized that Eli and I live in very different places.  I live in reality and he lives in a smacked out dream world where sixty dollars is the same as sixty thousand dollars. 

A year ago I would’ve just went out and bought all the things on my list for myself –except for the wedding band, which is probably going to live at the jeweler for another year because I can’t imagine having a spare few grand to lay down for something frivolous any time soon—but that’s the thing about giving up your salary.  The little things you would normally take for granted become pie in the sky.

What I’m mostly interested in this year is making sure Joey has a nice Christmas.  We decided to only get him a few things, since we totally blew our wad for his birthday last month.  And besides, he’s a baby and he’s just as excited when I give him an old frying pan to play with as when we surprise him with a brand new trike.

For Christmas he is getting an Aqua Doodle, a baby farm friends bowling set, an album of his own that he can drag around, that I’ve filled with pictures of people he loves, two new books and a package of chenille pipe cleaners.

The Aqua Doodle is for drawing since I know he would love to draw, and I want to release his inner artist, yet every time I give him crayons, he misunderstands their purpose and eats them.  He is especially fond of magenta and blue, and even though they are non-toxic, he goes at them like they’re French fries and that much crayon can’t be good for anyone’s body.  He even eats the paper wrapping.

The farm friends bowling set is an impulse buy.  I added it on because the shifty bastards at Amazon flashed it in my face when I was getting ready to check out and I’m a sucker for a cool toy.  The album is for separation anxiety since he doesn’t see his grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins every day.  It’s a way to remind him who they are so that he doesn’t freak out and scream when my mom picks him up and gives him a big kiss when she walks in the door after not seeing him for a week.  I don’t know how to ease his mind when he gets separation anxiety about me because he’s a little melodramatic about it.  For example, if I grab my keys, put on my jacket and run outside to start the car to let it warm up before we go somewhere, Joey will run to the door, throw himself against it and wail like he’s being murdered.  It’s pathetic to see, this little face mashed up against the glass, mouth frozen in a scream I can’t hear, and huge baby tears in his eyes.  As soon as I walk back up the steps toward the door he breaks out into an enormous, slightly manic smile and screams at me in hysterical delight like he can’t believe I’ve returned and I’m not leaving him forever!  He does the same thing when I go to the bathroom or walk upstairs.

The books are for me because I’m getting tired of the current rotation of baby reading material we have around here.  I read all his books to him every day and he never seems to tire of the same old stories.  He screams with delight every time I read the Very Hungry Caterpillar, as though it’s the first time he’s heard the amazing story.  He can barely wait for me to read through the pages, and impatiently tries to turn them himself, so excited to find out what happens.  Like he has no idea that the caterpillar is going to first eat through a whole range of junk food like lollipops and cake, then get a belly ache, and then turn into a beautiful butterfly at the end.  I wish I could maintain the same enthusiasm for the story, but I can’t because it is always the same.  I’m tempted to change it up and tape in my own substitute illustrations just to make it more interesting.  Like maybe the hungry caterpillar could eat through old tires or a kitten.  Maybe he doesn’t get a belly ache, and instead becomes a savage vampire, hungry for blood, stalking the jungle looking for weak or sickly animals to eat through.  And maybe at the end he turns into a bat because that’s what eating bunnies and kittens will do to a caterpillar.

And lastly, the pipe cleaners are for imagination.  When I was young, my cousin and I filled a whole dollhouse with things made from pipe cleaners.  The house was a set of wooden shelves built into the wall in her basement, and in the house lived a pipe cleaner family with their pipe cleaner dog.  We’d twist the pipe cleaners into amazing shapes to create furniture and appliances and food, and everything else the pipe cleaner family would need to live there.  It was much better than the stupid Barbie house where everything was already made and all you could do was pose Barbie in her various, pre-decorated rooms.  I know Joey is too young yet to take on that kind of project, but there are lots of things we can do with the pipe cleaners now.  We could make special poking devices to rouse the kitties from their naps, pipe cleaner glasses to wear on our faces around the house, we could twist them all into a big chain and wrap it around each other…the possibilities are endless. Eventually I would like all of Joey’s toys to come from the Weird Shit aisle at AC Moore.  They have everything you would ever need to make any kind of toy you want.  There are foam cutouts, pieces of felt, packages of googly eyes, doll body parts, long rolls of brightly colored muppet fur…it’s all there just waiting for someone to put it together into something interesting. 

As for what I’m getting Eli for Christmas?   We’re not exchanging gifts, so I had to come up with something selfless.  Some free act of love that would show him how much I love him, even if I can’t buy him something to unwrap.  So I took the baby for his second flu shot.  Normally this would just be something I’d do anyway since I’m the one home during the week, but shot day was a day we were both home.  When I walked out the door with the baby in my arms, on our way to the place where they stick him with needles, Eli was on the couch, under a blanket, watching a television show about planets.  Not only did I have to shower and get dressed early in the morning, but I also had to keep Joey amused in the waiting room for twenty minutes, hold him down so the nurse could violate his sweet baby leg, and then hold him and whisper shhhh in his ear while rocking him after it was all over to let him know that everything was okay even though I wanted to cry right along with him.  It was a true gift because I hate shot day and I’d rather give twenty gallons of my own blood if it would spare my child the agony of one needle prick.

Comments

[Andrea]

My wedding band is platinum and it's been nothing but a pain in the ass since I got it. I thought it was the strongest possible metal to get, but the band is always going mushy and getting misshapen just by normal everyday wear. My engagement ring does the same thing. Hubby got a white gold band and has none of these problems. Hmph.