Circumventing Clause (Mrs. Clause, that is)

It has been a complete whirlwind in our house for the past month. With numerous social events on the calendar, five – yes, five birthday parties for our munchkin, mixed in with volunteer committee meetings, both of our sisters visiting (one from Texas, one from Atlanta), and two out of state conferences that I attended, I never knew where I was coming from or going to. Chris started sending me calendar invites so things would start popping up on my blackberry so I would know where I needed to drive to next, for the next event he committed me to. Funny, as mentioned in the previous post, he never sent the calendar invite for a 6pm Friday night holiday party. He too probably thought the timing was off and he didn’t want to confuse me anymore than I actually was.

Due to my coming and goings, Chris has been a trooper and wrapped up all of Kensington’s Christmas gifts from us… and all of the gifts from Santa are in the basement and have been unboxed, assembled, batteries inserted, and ready to be placed under the tree (well, we say that, but the way our tree is situated, it’s not really feasible). Albeit, one gift has remained upstairs because of the sheer size of it, and because it came from Mrs. Clause, not Santa himself. Mrs. Claus has been generally depicted in media as a fairly heavy-set, kindly, white-haired elderly female baking cookies somewhere in the background of the Santa Claus mythos. That’s not the case here, though she does assists in toy production, and oversees many elves on a daily basis. Her personality tends to be fairly consistent; she is usually seen as a calm, kind, and patient woman, often in contrast to Santa himself, who can be prone to acting too exuberant (come on, he’s on a deadline and his helpers have little nugget-fingers. Do you know how hard it is to use power tools with little snausages attached to you palm?) While, in the media, she is sometimes called Mother Christmas, and Mary Christmas has been suggested as her maiden name; we call her friend, advocate, co-architect.

Mrs. Clause’s gift was behind closed doors, and Chris and I have made every effort to ensure that KGrace didn’t see it if we had to go into the room. We’d crack the door open just a smidgen and creep in, only to hear a soft “knock, knock” followed by Kensington’s tiny fist pounding on the door. She knew something was up, and she was going to do her damnedest to get to the bottom of it. So, imaging our surprise when after dinner last week, we head into the living room for an exciting episode of “The Fresh Beat Band” (seriously, we need some adult entertainment in our lives. Nick Junior is starting to make me have nightmares), when from around the corner we hear, “Beep, Beep!” Chris and I, along with his sister, Rhonda, looked at each other. We’re pretty familiar with all of the toots, horns, chimes, etc on her toys. This was one we hadn’t heard before. We get up and follow the “beeps”. We come around the corner and in the storage room... the door is open (how in the world did she turn the knob? Note to self, get more child-proof door locks). And there she is… sitting in her gift. She flipped the power switch, fastened her seatbelt, and was ready to burn rubber.

Moral of this story: What our daughter wants, our daughter gets. Lord, help us all!