presents were opened. children were amazingly well-behaved. pictures and stories to follow, whenever i’m no longer ass-deep is trying to get things back under control after two weeks away from home. i’m thinking this might occur around the twelfth of never. especially since i keep coming up with other stuff to do besides fill up some free time for you bitches. like catering the inaugural “you assholes need to pass your boards the FIRST time” mandatory biweekly study class for the first year radiology residents with a loaf of coconut banana bread, a pile of empanadas, and a pitcher of hot sauce. and no drinks! i’m told the ball sweat was rolling down the chair legs in the conference room. also, i’ve been trying to learn some fiddle tunes on the banjo… and until you’ve tried it, i swear, you cannot possibly understand how difficult it is. banjos, with their strings tuned to steadily diminishing intervals, are remarkably ill-suited to play tunes designed for an instrument tuned to even intervals. the banjo players – they’re not retarded! really! the tongues hang out of their mouths for good reason! but mostly, i’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time alternately walking with and dodging 11-month-old trogdor. when he isn’t busy skittering balls across the floor to chase, pushing buttons on anything that has them, pulling stacks of anything he can reach to the floor, and stuffing small nooks full of anything he can get his hands on, he wants to WALK. now, to his credit, he knows his head is heavy and the floor is hard. the boy has some damn sense. however, his determination generally wins out over his caution – all he needs is me, hunched over, 24/7 (okay, more like 2-4/7, but still!), one of my forefingers clutched in each chubby little hand, so he can GO, his feet pounding under his waddly little butt, his face lit up with a slightly terrified smile, screeching in triumph as he takes himself wherever he wants to be.
until, that is, mommy needs to stop for a moment to make a peanut butter sandwich, move a load of laundry, move a load of something else (yeah. i went there. you know it’s totally adorable when i do that.) when i try to plunk him on his butt, he first tries to pretend his hips are not jointed. when he finally ahs to give up on all the tensing and grunting, he grudgingly allows me to seat him, only to immediately flip around onto his knees and one hand, making a swift grab for my legs with the other hand so he can pull himself back to his feet before i dodge him. should i manage to elude him (and i don’t always, taking us back to step 1), he charges after me, head down, eyebrows knitted, screeching “NANANANANANANA NOOOO!” and that little bugger is fast. if i go to do something beyond the baby gates, he smacks his forehead on the gate a few times to make sure i know he’s pissed, then heads off to burble happily at his toys or his brothers for a few minutes until i return. but if i put him down to do something in the kitchen or living room, he keeps on me, and if i stop for a second, he’s right there, pissed as hell until the second he makes it to his feet, when his expression abruptly goes from storm clouds to droolly grin of adoration as he looks up at me from knee height. anything i do from then on is slowed by alternately tricking him into leaning his weight on some furniture or helping him to walk with me.
so. my point? progress these days is mighty damn slow 
so, until i take a moment to write some witty captions for some of my favorite christmas photos, i give you a few christmas videos:
the twits stomped on graham crackers to make the crust of a totally kickass coconut-peanut-butter-chocolate candy. i made a ton of the shit. and ate most of it myself. these were probably the 5th and 6th bags they had stomped, so between the stomping, stirring, egg-smashing and whatnot, they were really winding down by the time i busted out the camera.
then it was on to kentucky, where cutebutevil, deep in a mommy-won’t-let-me-run-naked-so-i’ll-dress-up-in-anything-i-can-get-my-hands-on phase, gets her groove on.
then trogdor went smashing through his ra-ra’s card game. this is a case of “awww, he’s doing something cute, run and get the camera!” by the time i got the camera, he had finished the adorable smashing and swirling of playing cards, and had settled into looking back and forth from ra-ra to the cards, wondering what the hell to do to next.
after a week in kentucky, it was on to illinois, where i again mostly neglected the camera in favor of actually participating in the moment. (see? doesn’t that sound so much better than “i forgot?” yay, euphemisms!) so, again, you get random glimpses of fairly unremarkable occurences. in fact, skip the next two entirely if you’re not related to trogdor, because that’s about the only thing that would make you find them adorable instead of boring.
trogdor tries to steal my belt buckle.
trogdor tries to steal my camera.
and, finally… the new years eve mosh pit, where a dozen or so friends and family between the ages of 1 and 40 took turns beating the crap out of each other on the wii, beating the crap out of each other with the new nerf weaponry, and, in the case of positiverolemodel and spazmonkey, beating the crap out of each other bare handed/footed… just because.
