Free Christmas Through a Child's Eyes by Helen Szymanski Page A

with an eighteen-month-old toddler. (Though, one day, I did find a pair of dirty socks draped across one of the lower branches.)
    The boys would rather have watched superhero cartoon reruns than any of my favorite Christmas specials, like Santa Claus is Comin' to Town, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and Frosty the Snowman. I insisted that if they were to watch superhero cartoons, they'd have to do it upstairs and without me. They went gladly … so much for togetherness.
    Creating our gingerbread house was an extravagantly messy affair. Not only because the pastry bag sprung a few leaks, but also because it was so hard to keep it twisted closed to keep the icing from squeezing out the wrong end! Eventually, we all used our hands to smear the royal icing “mortar” on the gingerbread pieces. The house wasn't much to begin with, but that didn't bother my sons. It worked well for target practice. It was decimated nearly as soon as it was built. Throughout the rest of the holiday season, I found reminders of our gingerbread fiasco — icing crusted on various knobs, dials, switches, and faucets.
    Because I played the Christmas music in the DVD player, which was attached to the TV, Griffin couldn't understand why there was sound, but no picture. “Show?” he would ask plaintively, as he handed me the fingerprint-covered CD he'd just divested from the DVD player.
    The only Christmas music we heard was when we were serenaded by Mark and Daniel belting out, “Jingle bells, Batman smells, the Joker learned ballet … hee-hee-hee, snicker, snicker, snort!”
    They fought over the Advent calendar. Griffin's participation was limited to examining and then discarding the felt-and-Velcro nativity scene characters, much to the chagrin of his two rules-based, school-aged brothers, who tried in vain to keep the characters in sequential order beginning with the star, angel, and shepherds and ending with the Wise Men, gifts, and Jesus. Thinking I had found a solution, I moved the calendar to a less obvious spot. Unfortunately, we never ticked off another day.
    The nativity set was reduced to a battle scene and the boys launched Baby Jesus off the roof of the crèche. That we still had tiny Baby Jesus and his little straw bed after four seasons was, in itself, one of the miracles of Christmas. Compounding their irreverence was the extent of their interest in our Advent celebration. The boys argued not only about who got to light the candles, but also who got to blow them out. Sometimes we lit them and blew them out repeatedly until everyone had an equal number of turns.
    I was on overload, as I was essentially trying to cram five days worth of work into four days on top of all the added holiday hoopla, which resulted in my sampling far too many cookies and chocolates and drinking way too much coffee.
    â€œIt's chaos at my house,” I concluded to Kathy.
    She chuckled and nudged me. “C'mon, that's part of the fun!”
    I rolled my eyes. “Uh-huh.”
    As I drove off that morning, I thought about our conversation. I really didn't want to be such a grinch, and Kathy was right — this was Christmas — all of the boys' antics should be taken in stride, because it really was part of the fun. Right then and there, I decided to embrace the pandemonium.
    The rest of the holiday season included Griffin's new tradition of pulling pinecones, bells, and candy canes off the tree (the only things left on the bottom half) and hiding them around the house and Mark and Daniel's regular habit of shrieking potty words and scrapping like a couple of puppies. I knew that reminders of Santa Claus seeing them when they were sleeping, knowing when they were awake, and knowing if they'd been bad or good would be useless. I simply told them that I expected the mess to be cleaned up before they watched their superhero cartoons.
    My children's gift to me was to remind me to view Christmas as they do. Once I aligned