The Black Sewing Machine Opens

I'm piecing together part of Daniel's Halloween costume. Gradually I notice that he's walking around talking in a 'proclamation' tone of voice, and eventually I am able to pick out the words:

"There may come a day, when the children of this house forget Trick or Treating! When they no longer put on Halloween costumes! But it is not this day!! There may come a day, when the children of this house no longer want to dress up! But it is not this day!! Today, we SEW!!"

Thanksgiving

Second Thanksgiving dinner in two days. Justin is delighted. Had part of an amazing 24-pound turkey last night at ninja_kat's house, and part of a 12-pounder today at our house. We weren't even going to make turkey this year at our house, but Justin was devastated at the thought of that so we bought one and invited people over (one of Chris' colleagues & her family, and Guy) and managed a Thanksgiving dinner of sorts.

It started off rather awful and had several low points, not the least of which was one in which both of our kids pitched screaming tantrums at the same time, and had to be hauled off to separate time-outs. I think it ended up OK, though. Daniel calmed down fairly quickly, and Justin... didn't, but spent enough time away from the rest of us that we managed a reasonably pleasant meal. And the two kids who were our guests today seemed to find him amusing, so that helped.

Justin has been in fine form the last two days - overly excited at the whole turkey thing, he's been excruciatingly loud, very rough, and completely unable to control himself. Yesterday one of the guests started to make jokes about not ever wanting kids himself, and standing in front of the microwave every chance he had, etc etc that really made me wish we could just decide once and for all to simply never let Justin out of the house again. I get so tired of the comments and jokes and raised eyebrows about his behaviour. We try firmness, we try talking, we try sympathizing, we try time-outs, we try yelling, we try meditation exercises, we read books, etc etc and nothing seems to work. His behaviour has improved in that he's no longer like this 24/7, but nothing seems to get him to behave like a human being and not a horrible little walking ad for contraception when one of these moods strikes.

I hate feeling the need to apologise to humanity at large for inflicting this horrible little brat on everybody. And yet I feel that need a lot.

I keep wondering what we're doing wrong with him. Then I keep rememebering that when he was a baby, after months and months of trying to figure out whether we were being too indulgent, too strict, too whatever and therefore causing his extraordinary clinginess, we finally found out that he had constant ear infections. He was in pain almost every single day. And of course he clung to me, and wanted to nurse all day long - nothing to do with his personality, it was just that nursing was the only thing that took the pain away.

And then when he was three, after almost two years of wondering why the ear tubes had helped curb his glue-like nature and constant need for nursing, but not brought him down to bearable behaviour, we found out he was nearly blind. And that once again, the behaviour had little to do with our child-rearing or his personality; he just couldn't see a damn thing and was afraid to get too far from us and lose us in the fog.

Anyway. This isn't turning out to be such a thankful entry. I'm not in a terribly thankful mood, I guess. I'm aware that intellectually, there is a lot to be thankful for, and I could probably list off the top of my head a large number of good things in our lives, that most people on the planet would be grateful for. But in a year that's included a hysterectomy, a death, and yet another marital plunge, it's hard to match the emotions with the objective reality that we've still got a lot of positive stuff going on.

OK. Taking a page from various self-help gurus and generations of platitudes about if you make yourself smile pretty soon you'll feel it inside or whatever, here's a list of what I'm thankful for this year, in no particular order:

• The kids; as tiresome as they can be, they're also literally the light of our lives a lot of the time
  
• School, for not sucking nearly as badly this year as it did last year
  
• Our general good health
  
• Today: a clean house, yummy turkey, stuffing, squash, cranberry sauce, salad, and pumpkin pies
  
• Weight loss (ironic to list this right under that last item)
  
• Daniel and Justin's teachers
  
• Harmonia Choir, for giving me something to do separate from everything else on Wednesday nights
  
• Homeschooling Family Choir, for giving me and Daniel something to do on home schooling Fridays, and giving me an incentive to teach the kids music
  
• Our marriage counselor
  
• My mom's presence for the first few years of the kids' lives
  
• Guy's continued presence in our lives
  
• ninja_kat, Scott, and Karolyn
  
• Todd, Susan, Turtle and Zany
  
• Sarah, Rainer, Sandra and Matthias
  
• Our extended family and friends
  
• All of you
  
• H:LOTS, LOTR & L&O DVDs for visual brain-candy
  
• Gonna go off and be thankful to one of the above right now, as a matter of fact :)