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This evening I feel oddly cheerful. I shouldn’t, because I derailed Howards whole workday by getting frustrated with the xbox and sending him on a customer support goose-chase. (The foolish assumption being that adequate customer support actually exists for a corporate electronics product.)

Having Howard grumpy puts a serious crimp in the day. It used to be that he would haul himself off to Novell and sometimes by the time he came home the grumpy would have been left behind. Unfortunately sometimes the grumpy returned with reinforcements. Now the grumpy just lumps around the house (sometimes switching hosts) until either Howard or I manage to banish it.

My devious plan this evening is to put all the kids to bed happily and early enough that we can banish the grumpy with the first episode of Buffy Season Seven. Mostly I want to be with him and be cheerful so that he can have some cheerful and we can be happy together. That is the best of times.

Over the past week Patches bedtime has gone screwy. It has been kind of wonky for most of December, but since school got out for Christmas he’s been not-sleeping at some really unexpected times. For example on Saturday night he didn’t go to sleep until about 9:30, kind of late. Then Sunday he skipped his nap and was exhausted, but I was unable to get him to sleep until nearly 11 pm. Monday he napped just fine in his crib, but refused to go to sleep there at bedtime. I ended up standing and jouncing him to sleep at 9:15. Determined to put an end to sporadic bedtimes, last night I put him to bed promptly at 7:30. He played happily in his crib until 9 when I had to put Link to bed, then he cried so I got him up to allow Link to fall asleep.

Not knowing what to expect at bedtime drives me batty. I NEED time off from the kids in the evenings. So once again I’m falling back on my old standby of charting sleep behaviors. It’s a trick I learned from the book How To Solve Your Child’s Sleep Problems by Richard M Ferber. Basically I create a graph which is 24 squares wide and about 14 squares high. Each line 24 squares across represents the hours of a day. As each day passes I color in the squares according to whether the child was awake or asleep. Red for awake. Blue for asleep. After a few days I can usually see patterns emerging. Once I know what the schedule is, I can adjust it.

In this case I suspect that Patches’ sleep schedule has shifted. He doesn’t get sleepy and ready for bed until sometime after 9 pm. If I try to put him to bed earlier than that he’ll be unable to fall asleep and will rebel at being stuck in his crib. The evenings he stayed up way late were nights where I attempted to put him to bed and met with rebellion and then gave up. So what I need to do now is gradually sneak his bedtime forward. Tonight I’ll try putting him down at 9. If it works, then I’ll do it tomorrow too. The day after I’ll put him down at 8:45. So slowly day by day I sneak his bedtime to where I want it at 7:30. It may mean that his naptime needs to move earlier or be shortened or even that he is getting up earlier in the morning, but I’ll trade that for calmer bedtimes.

Kiki and Link just passed the true test of “Happy Christmas”. They just came home from playing with a friend whose pile of Christmas loot was larger than that of our entire family combined. I half expected them to come home with a list of things they didn’t get. Instead they excitedly told me all the cool things their friend got and then happily went off to play.

Even better, an hour later the friend showed up at our door. He joined our kids in playing with their home-made gifts.

We had a wonderful Christmas. Today I am feeling incredibly grateful because everything that made Christmas wonderful for the kids (And adults too) was a gift to us from someone else. The Knex, bop-it, capsela, and tonka trucks which were the Christmas Morning Surprises came from a neighbor. The Polly Pockets and Hamtaro items came from my parents. Another neighbor bought barbie, polly pocket, and star wars toys for my kids unexpectedly. And the money that bought DDR and a pair of pads for me came from Lady Anne and Level head. The Return of the King Deluxe Set came from our friend Richard Bliss.

A few weeks ago I was so proud of my “$100 Christmas”. Now I feel humble and grateful because for all my running around and bargain hunting it would not have been so lavish a Christmas without the generosity of others.

Every Christmas Eve I have a moment when I’ve arranged all the surprises, wrapped all the presents, stuffed all the stockings, then I stand back and look at the array and wonder “will they be happy?” As a parent I really want Christmas to be a joyful, magical day where dreams come true. Some years I’ve stood back and wondered if I’d gotten too much, thus causing overload. This year I fear disapointment. There are simply some items that my kids would love to have and I can’t afford to buy for them. Tonight during our Christmas Eve ritual we talked carefully about finding joy in giving and mentioned the fact that we won’t all get everything we want.

I hope that if there are tears tomorrow I know what to say to mend them.

I do not think I have ever seen Gleek as wired as she was this evening. She quite literally could not sit still during dinner. She was running laps across the kitchen. Then when I made her stay in her chair she stood on it bouncing up and down flapping her arms while I spooned bites of food into her mouth. Attempting reverse psychology I said “I bet you can’t sit still for three minutes.” As expected she said “Yes I can!” Then she sat down motionless for two seconds then started drumming her feet against the table.

Christmas is exciting.

I took my name off the Freecycle mailing list today. I got some useful things from it and unloaded some stuff that I thought I’d never get rid of. But the local list moves too fast for me. Lately anything I might be interested in gets taken within minutes. If I want to get an item I have to notice it within minutes of it posting and I have to be willing to jump in my car and go get it right away. I’m not willing to put that much effort into monitoring the list and so the result is that I’m getting spammed with notices about items being offered and then taken.

I’ll probably sign up for it again when I’m actively seeking stuff, but for right now there isn’t anything I don’t have and really need.