It`s a lot of work.

This year, I really want to make December special for my boys. They`re big enough now to appreciate things like Christmas crafts and cookie making and all that. For Dorian, this is probably the first Christmas he`ll actually remember in years to come. So I want to incorporate some family traditions and make sure that the house is actually decorated nicely this year!

We will put our tree up on the first of December, as always. I`m working at making some more ornaments for it, but I`m sure the boys will enjoy some salt dough cookie painting, as well!

Here are a few other things that are in the works at the moment:

• Christmas jammies (I actually drafted the pattern and have the tops made out of test fleece so far, the real stuff will be done shortly)
• Warm chenille hats that I`m crocheting for all of us
• Advent Calendar (plans are drawn up, just need the fabric and to figure out how to make the tiny ornaments)
• Cross-stitch ornaments with sparkly thread

And some stuff that I`m still planning . . .

• Car cushions for two little boys
• A nativity scene . . . possibly made of felt or clay
• Gingerbread house and cookies
• Garlands to hang over our very bare windows
• Some sort of wreath for the door
• Christmas music cd
• Napkins and tablecloth
• Christmassy placemats

Of course, the boys` gifts all need to be made as well. I`m so glad I finished their stockings last year! I wouldn`t have had time this year because I`ve been swamped with writing work lately (which is TOTALLY COOL, btw!). And, now that Irving got my sewing machine running, sort of, I`ve been sewing up a storm and it`s so much fun! Every night I work on crochet hats while we watch a movie and then it`s back to writing work before bed. Hopefully I`ll be able to share more photos soon!

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At the lunch table this afternoon . . .

“I`m sad for Pepsi. It`s really sad there`s no Pepsi.”

After his brother was bugging him and taking his cars . . .

“Mama. I`m MAD. I`m SO MAD. Dante is bugging!”

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After going into his dark room to get a toy . . .

“WOOOO! I`m scared! That`s really scary!”

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Last night, after vomiting all over the floor, the chair and me . . .

“Well, that was disgusting.”

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It`s getting passed on, too. Now Dante will shriek at something . . . anything, really, from a bug to something on TV and run to hide his face in my leg, yelling “Me sus TASTE!” Which is his version of “me asustaste” which means “You scared me”.

So, last week, I talked about T, my first boyfriend. That`s where my precedent for dumping guys first, before they had a chance to do it to me, got started.

See, it turned out that while I was having fun and hanging out with T, enjoying hikes with him and his buddy, going sailing with his family and such . . . he was falling in love with me. And I mean FALLING hard! It wasn`t a pretty sight.

Course, he was too shy to actually do anything about it, so one night, I got on the ferry and he handed me a note. Well, it was more a letter than a note. And it basically poured out his heart to me and how he loved me and wanted to be with me forever . . . and I freaked out.

Turns out I was commitment phobic. So I stressed over everything for a few days and finally wrote him a letter back (I`m thinking now that the fact we had to write letters to each other instead of just talking about it was probably a good sign that we were too emotionally immature to deal with a real relationship). Basically, I said I didn`t love him and could we just chill things out. So we hung out still, but now it was just awkward. And he started trying to impress me with crazy, crazy stuff. Like lying about everything. I told him I didn`t want to date a liar. He told me he knew EVERYONE in town, and they all liked him. I asked him who the girl at the Walmart checkout was then and he couldn`t tell me. Stuff like that.

I wrote another letter. And it was to break up with him. I just gave it to him before I left the next time we saw each other. He called me like 12 times a day for a week, sobbing and begging me to take him back and I felt AWFUL. But not awful enough to take him back.

So that was that. About a month after he gave up calling me all the time, a girl from cadets called me and invited me to their wedding, which was a month later. Apparently she`d always liked him and so, when he was free, she jumped on the chance to be the rebound . . . and he asked her to marry him. I don`t know much about that, since I didn`t go to the wedding (how awkward would THAT be?) which was just 2-3 months after I`d broken up with him, but I do know that they got divorced sometime in the ten years since then. He`s actually on Facebook. And I think he just got married again. Hopefully it will work out this time!

The weirdest part about all this? I was really good friends with his parents and one day, at a dance that T was djing for (he had his own business), his dad came over and said, “I realize you probably won`t be with my son much longer, but I just want you to know that I think of you as a daughter already and I`d really like it if you would still visit us.” This was after the first letter, so it was definitely on my mind and he must have figured it out. T`s mom told me something very similar a few days later!

I don`t know about you, but staying friends with an ex`s family (especially if he still lives there!) isn`t really that easy. So we didn`t stay in touch, though I found his mom through a midwifery site about six months back and we had a little catchup email.

And, to make a long story longer . . . I decided right then that I would never let a guy break up with me, I`d make the first move. It looked WAY too painful. And I mostly stuck to that except once when a guy that I really did love convinced me NOT to break up with him . . . just so he could do it a week later.

After my little midnight panic last night, I totally couldn`t sleep and so, to help me calm down and all, I wrote out a really ambitious to do list for today. :S A word of advice. Never (and I do mean NEVER) write a to do list at 1 am. It`s just not sane.

Here`s a glimpse of my midnight scrawlings . . .
- Write blogs (currently 7 paid ones)
- Write At Home Mom article
- Write turkey article
- Finish web content due today
- Fix sewing machine
- Shopping list
- Make puppets
- Plan gift list
- Make Memory game cards
- Plan Dorian`s birthday (he`s THREE in less than a month!)
- Make star mobiles for boys
- Wash clothes (by hand, since the washer woman quit)
- Clean Dorian`s room (it was up to the ankles in books and dirty clothes

There was a lot of other stuff, mostly involving gifts of people who read this blog . . . stuff like a crocheted scarf and two super smoking bags. In other words, a month`s worth of work. To be done in one day.

The sewing machine thing has been on my to do list forever. See, Irving used to put it up on top of our wardrobe. I can`t even reach up there and the sewing machine that I have is pure iron and weighs a ton. So I couldn`t get it down by myself, which just sucked because the only time I sew is when he`s not here. So I asked him not to do that and I set up a sewing table and everything and I even actually sewed there.

Until Irving decided that his sound equipment simply MUST be in the bedroom (why, I`m not sure, since he`s never in there except to sleep . . ) and my sewing table was perfect for it. To be fair, he DID consider my previous request not to put my sewing machine out of reach, so he did me one better . . . he put it in reach of EVERYONE! As in, small boys everyone.

I was totally oblivious until Dante and Dorian paraded out of the room one morning, about four months ago, all proud of themselves and handing me odds and ends. It took me a while to figure out where this tiny broken lightbulb and assorted springs and screws had come from.

The machine was torn apart, at least the pedal and front part. That poor, poor sewing machine, which says Singer on the side, but really is just a copycat machine, had seen me through four years. Through running my own store with baby clothes and assorted sewn bags and wallets, through custom sewing through six layers of heavy Guatemalan fabric for bus seat covers and through countless curtain orders. But it just couldn`t stand up to my little destroyers.

Today, I asked Irving to pull all the bits and pieces (which he supposedly stored) and I would start working on it. Well, we found out immediately that nothing worked. Irving mucked around for a bit and ended up getting this huge spider nest thingie out of the gears and the needle would go up and down. But the pedal was a lost cause. It`s basically just the bottom part of the pedal. He tried sticking another, older sewing machine pedal on there, but it didn`t work either. So here I sit, waiting for kids to wake up so he can resume his rather noisy attempts to fix a machine that, in my humble opinion, shouldn`t have even been broken. sigh. Oh well. At least I can start on the cross-stitch.

This week, I`m determined to get out of the house. Even if it means a late nap for my two little guys. And we`ll head down to watch Papi Fut, because my guys are all about the ball. And the fut. Cuz they`re totally Guatemalan dudes!

I probably won`t be posting for a day or two because Jessie just totally freaked me out with her Christmas decorating and I`m going into panic mode. I haven`t even started making gifts yet and my sewing machine is broken and I have to figure out if I can fix it myself or find someone who can, since Irving hasn`t yet made good on his promise to take a look.

Lately, it seems like the all I do is write and deal with whiny kids and think about stuff I`m missing. That sounds terrible, but borrowing a page from Christine`s book . . . just keeping it real.

Before I met Irving, I had zero interest in ever actually having a long term relationship. I`d tried it and it had backfired horribly, leaving me with a scarred heart and the realization that my original plans to go through life alone were more intelligent than I`d anticipated. As for kids . . . I figured I`d adopt them in my late 30`s, once I`d tried everything I wanted to do.

See, I didn`t have a very exciting life up until I left Canada. Most of my hopes and dreams were centered around doing stuff AFTER I left home and earned enough money to travel, etc. I dreamed of being an actress (since I was 6), a doctor and a writer. Well, I am a writer now, so one dream did come true, but there are times (like recently) when I look around at what I`ve become and wonder.

It`s not that I`ve become something bad. I`m a mom, which is mostly wonderful, a wife, which has it`s ups and downs, but is way better than I`d imagined, and a writer, a childhood dream.

But what I miss is being able to be creative and paint and draw and experiment with cooking and read books (in English) and being, well, ME. Maybe part of the problem is that I had that brief glimpse of what an exciting life could be, when I packed everything up, said my goodbyes to anyone I`d ever known and took off for foreign lands. It was scary, exhilarating and realizing that I could survive was so amazing.

I feel like I`ve lost myself somewhere along the way and I`m not sure if that`s the way it`s supposed to be . . . I mean, I DO have two toddlers, so maybe this is how it is until they grow up? But I`m not sure I want to just be Mom for 18 years, I want some of me back, too. Just not sure of how to get it back.

Dante was born with big blue eyes and I was thrilled to finally have someone to carry on the Davies eyes.

Everyone teased me that they would go brown shortly, but as I waited with bated breath, they stayed BLUE! He hit the one year mark, supposedly when eyes stop changing and he still had those beautiful baby blues.

And then . . .

I`m not sure what color that is, but it`s sure not blue anymore! He`s still light eyed for a Guatemalan, but it`s not the same. sigh. I guess we`ll have to keep having kids until one of them turns out properly blue eyed. lol

Not so with Dante. He`s in full tantrum mode these days and he won`t be two until May! Here`s a sneak peek . . .

I usually ignore these tantrums as much as possible, but the same can`t be said for his playmates who were very concerned about him. Dorian was sure that his brother had hurt his head.

At the same time, he hit the whole separation anxiety thing late, so we`re dealing with that and defiance at the same time.

The other day, Irving left for work during the day and Dante was heartbroken that he couldn`t go with his papa.

Fortunately, he`s also quite distractable at this age, so having Mama chase him up and down the path got him over the horror of being left behind.

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This was at the dinner table, by the way. They aren`t even three yet . . . can you imagine the problems I`m going to have with these two when they`re teens and actually have someone to talk to on the phone? So not looking forward to that.