I Can't Stand it! I Know You Planned it! or This Year's Christmas Card

It's ostensibly Autumn. I'm not sure when this became, like, some national, sub-concious Parenting Law(tm) but, apparently, we're all supposed to take the kids to some sort of apple orchard/petting zoo/pumpkin farm/(Where the F is the bar around here?) country experience. I guess since my falls were spent watching combines and grain trucks crawl across the landscape, it still weirds me out that we have to pay to get a little hay in our hair.

Regardless, the boys and Katie went to the country experience place on the one sunny day we've had since mid-September and had a ye olde grande tyme.

Now, what I really want to talk about here is the annual damn Christmas card. Every year we (coughcoughKatiecoughcough) scour through our JPEGs to find the absolute epitome of the Look! At! Our! Cute! Kids! BTW! Merry! Christmas! picture. Then we get offended when we go over to our friends' houses and our picture isn't prominently placed on their fridge or mantle, preferably with it's own lighting. In my opinion, the best card we ever got was from a friend who snapped a picture with his a kids eating breakfast, smiling all cute, in the foreground and, in the background through the window behind them, there's dad, jumping crazily, kinda out of focus. Staged or not, it looked totally spontaneous and fun and seemed to more about what the last year had been about than posing your kids, oh, say. . . on some pumpkins.

So here's my nomination for this year's Christmas card: 





I want everyone, when they get it, to make a big sign that says: "Apple Tree Attack!" and then put both up on your fridge. Let's end the tyranny of the cute!







Oh, by the way, here's what will be this year's actual card:

That's Right, Hipsters, I've Been Listening to LCD Soundsystem Since Before I was Born

No, you're not going blind. The video is horribly fuzzy.

Now, let's be clear, we do some dancing in this house. For most of Max's life, though, the dancing has been done vicariously through me. . . literally. Mostly, for Max, what it means "to dance" is "I get on dad's shoulders and then sort of bounce around while he dances to Buddy Holly/Elvis/Jonathan Richman/Beck". This combination of two strikes is so brutal, it might as well be three strikes. Not only is the kid not actually dancing, he's got me setting the dancing example.

Counter-balancing all that, though, is Katie's Genealogical Rhythm Advantage(tm). Not only is Katie's mom (Grandma Kay: woot! woot!) a certified, actual, (formerly) professional ballet dancer, there's Katie. And, well, Katie. . . Katie is just one of those people you see in the center of a big circle on the dance floor. Over the sound of the funky drummer, what you hear is everybody in da club letting loose with a slack-jawed, "God-DAMN!" when Katie, mother of two, decides to tear that shit up. It's true: I've seen it. Actually, it happens when she's just walking, too. Even brushing teeth can get pretty boisterous. . . especially when that disco ball drops out of the bathroom ceiling.

So, much like the turtle that returns to the same beach where their egg hatched or a new-born colt begins to trot, Max proves -- thanks to his mom -- he's coded with the "Supah-Funky-Groovy-Tear-it-Up-YO!" gene.

Judging from little brother, Miles might be ok, too.

Booger Pedagogy