when the weather outside is frightening...

Pretty much the only things that keep me home are vomiting, an empty gas tank, and impulse haircuts. Otherwise, I'm outta here. I have a strong aversion to being in my house for long, or even significant, durations. There are several uninteresting reasons for this, but they don't matter. What matters is that somehow Monday found me home all day, though I can't recall why. It was just Quinny and me, and he was all sprawled out on the couch reading, and growing an average of three inches per minute.

My kids get very excited about the gifts they buy, and every year they amaze me with the things they select. Not only that, but they have serious stealth powers when it comes to buying/wrapping/stashing. This year Quinn bought some awkwardly-shaped items, so when he finished his book he asked me to help him wrap...EVERYTHING HE BOUGHT. Sure, totally, I'd love to, right? So I hauled out our really awkward pseudo-bin I guess you could call it, and we proceeded to cover the entire living room with paper, bows, microscopic scraps, shards of errant ribbon, and so forth. Yeah, it was the best. My OCD went into Four-wheel-drive. Quinn knows the basics of wrapping. That is to say, things that are square or rectangular. But what do I do with a reindeer sticking mostly out of the package? Well honey, you get a bigger box, and some tissue, blah blah blah.

One thing he was really concerned about was attempting to use cursive on all the tags. He has written exclusively in ALL CAPS for like three years, so cursive requires an awakening of a whole new lobe of his brain. He was doing really well, but got angsty about capital G's. I wrote several for him, and confessed that they're not exactly my favorite cursive letter either. So he focused on the tiny, slippery tag, and ended up writing such a beautiful G we've been asked to ship the tag to the Smithsonian after christmas. I was really proud of him. He perfected taut corners, how to hold the seam and rip off the tape, and most importantly, improvisation. 'Cause you know, some shit is always going to go wrong when wrapping presents. He was so pleased to see everything wrapped (except for my gift, which he surreptitiously managed to buy today), and I was so pleased to get all the shiny, sticky, itty bitty wrapping scraps out of my living room. I was really proud of him, even though he did use one gold bow, and gold is really...not my favorite. I love that my kids love to give, and that they care about every detail.

I also love that I've been out at least three times a day since then, despite the snow and ice. That's all I'm saying.