COVID Christmas: Squeeze from the Bottom to Get Just a Little More Magic Out of Mom

My darling children,

You are the wind beneath my wings, and by that I mean you keep farting while we’re sharing a blanket. My blanket. In my bed.

You are both the debris I am constantly sweeping AND the feet that run through my pile.

You are snack goblins.

Your voices ring in my head day and night because YOU ARE TALKING ALL DAY AND ALL NIGHT.

You go from loving each other fiercely to fiercely pummeling each other, in the blink of a black eye.

You draw straws to decide whose turn it is to make that terrible anger/hurt “OWWWWWW” sound.

You time it just right, so that when one of you leaves me alone in peace in a room, another one enters immediately, as if choreographed in a sitcom. Your dad is in on this, too.

You drop things on the floor and then they’re just part of the tapestry of life and you don’t even see the when it’s time to clean. Like it’s an art installation of Jolly Rancher wrappers in the middle of the dining room floor.

You’re home ALL THE TIME, and almost never asleep, so guess what, Tiny Tims, mom’s not Christmas elfing this year! All of your presents are getting dumped into Happy First Birthday gift bags, and in my tornado of online purchasing, I may have mixed up, and you may be getting a man’s monogrammed terry cloth robe. CONSIDER YOURSELF MAGIC’D.

You have…curious bathroom timing. When we’re in a hurry to leave the house for a real estate showing, you ALWAYS have to make an epic poop (which you hysterically refer to as “taking a dunk,” so I’ll allow this one). Or, if we’re already out of the house, you definitely need to pee, which is really cool, since a) it’s frigid, b) it’s COVID, and c) we’re in a well-populated area, so your choices are hiding behind a leafless tree in a neighborhood park, risking arrest and scrotal hypothermia, or going into an establishment where we’re sure to get bitten by virus-infested zombies and all surely die. But it’s fine.