I cut Robert’s hair for the first time just before he turned a year old, and I cut William’s hair for the first time even sooner than that–I think he was 9 or 10 months old. But Edward’s has been so skimpy, it didn’t need to be cut until today, when he is just short of 19 months old.

Mid-haircut photography is by Robert, and should have been by William: Robert is 2 years older but less skilled with the lens. Robert took about a dozen pictures that showed only the edge of the razor and two square inches of hair. The two below were the only ones that showed any face.

Here is Edward after the first swipe of the clippers, before he yet knew what was going on:

Here he is when he has understood that something is happening, and that it is not something he cares for:

And here he is afterwards, a sober but tidier-looking baby:

I would like to discuss baby names with you guys, but I realize there is a big problem: I have been using pseudonyms for my children on this blog. Part of what makes a name a “good name” is whether it goes well with the names of the other children in the family, and that’s not something you’d be able to look at. Who could blame you for suggesting that the next baby be Anne or James, when you are staring at a Robert, a William, an Elizabeth, and an Edward?

Clearly I have made a misstep on the blogging path, and now what do I do? Change all the names to be the real ones? Choose better pseudonyms?

I suppose what I am really wondering is how much personal information is appropriate to use online. Plenty of moms use their children’s real names, and plenty of moms go for code names, and I went with code names to be on the safe side, but now I’m feeling more like maybe it doesn’t matter.

If you blog, how did you decide whether or not to use real names for yourself and for members of your family?

Last year I made no resolutions. I had 6-month-old twins, and thought I had enough on my plate without resolving to…put less on my plate, or whatever.

Now I have toddler twins and I’m 17 weeks pregnant. I’m not making any resolutions this year, either.

Generally I like making resolutions. A good friend and I try to make interesting ones we’re likely to keep: one year I resolved to play the stock market for a whole year with monopoly money to see if it was something I wanted to invest real money in, and she resolved to choose a signature scent for her house and buy the necessary products to keep it smelling nice. Another year we both resolved to learn to knit, to see once and for all if we were actually going to keep doing it or if we’d just forget how again.

But ever since I had kids, I notice my resolutions take on a more dismal quality. I resolve to yell less. To play with the kids more. To keep the house cleaner. To set a better example by eating more vegetables. Blech. I don’t think I want to add that kind of failure to my life. It’s just as well I’m taking another year off: perhaps I can spend the time thinking of better resolutions.

My oldest child did manage to stay awake until 10:30, so he came upstairs and we watched the ball drop at midnight. He didn’t seem to even remember that I’d yelled at him an hour or two earlier. Here’s to short memories and fresh starts—Happy 2007, everyone.

So I just yelled at my two older children, at length. The classic no-no sentence “What is wrong with you?” was used. I went on for some time. I believe I repeated myself.

We were letting them see if they could stay up until midnight. The deal was that they could stay awake in their rooms, and even play quiet games together or talk quietly, and if they were still awake at 10:30 they could come upstairs and spend time with us until it was time to watch the ball drop. (I didn’t want their charming company all evening.)

It’s common for us to allow them to stay up together for awhile after bedtime, but if we can hear them upstairs being wild or loud, we tell them to go to their own rooms and close their doors. Tonight, we gave them many, many chances. We explained that normally we’d make them close their doors at this point, but that this was a special occasion and we wanted to allow them to stay up, but now stop being so loud for real. I think one or the other of us went down ten times or so to explain this calmly. I even delivered a long heartfelt seminar on the definition of loudness and the ways to avoid meeting that definition.

And then they started slamming their doors at each other, making that high-pitched hyper giggling sound, and I snapped. I started out fine: I went down the stairs briskly, said in firm brisk tones “That’s it; go to your own rooms and close your doors,” and headed briskly back up.

Halfway up the stairs, I felt a rush of anger. Clearly the right thing to do was to continue up the stairs, dish up a bowl of Breyer’s chocolate ice cream, and try not to spill any on this week’s People magazine article about weight loss. Instead I turned around, went down the stairs, opened both their doors, and yelled at them for a long time. Subjects covered included: how easy it was to understand what qualified as loudness and wildness; how easy it was to prevent such things from occurring; how clear our explanations and requirements had been; how generous we’d been to overlook so many violations; how fun this evening could have been if it hadn’t been for their behavior.

It was somewhere in there that I asked them the Very Wrong Question, inquiring what was wrong with them that they would behave this way. I could more legitimately ask myself the same question. They’re children, and they were wild and not very well behaved this evening, but they didn’t do anything to echo in anyone’s head later on. They’re aged five and seven, and I could have settled things satisfactorily just by separating them and closing their doors and talking to them about it later. Instead, I left them in their quiet bedrooms with a New Year’s memory of my yelling face. Big parenting mistakes feel so revolting, like food poisoning of the whole household.

Here is what is absorbing my time this week: thinking of excuses not to take down the decorations. Putting them up is fun, transforming the house into a holiday wonderland. Taking them down is like unpacking after a trip: it was fun to put everything into the suitcases in anticipation, and now that you are home it is not fun to unpack all the dirty laundry, near-empty travel-size containers, and the many miscellaneous items that belong in many miscellaneous places.

Every day that goes by, the decorations look sadder. How is it that metallic and glitter and colorful lights look so glorious before Christmas, and so cheap and tacky after? What is that garish tree doing in our living room, and how can we be the same people who put it there?

I ran to the grocery store tonight before dinner to get an ingredient we were missing for dinner. We’re lucky there’s a store less than 2 miles from our house, so running out for a missing ingredient is no big deal. Or, it wouldn’t be a big deal, for someone like Paul who can go all the way to the store for one single item and then have to go back the very next day for another single item. When I go to the grocery store, I remember everything we’re out of, everything we’re low on. Walking up the dairy aisle, supposedly just to get the eggs we must have for the cookies, I think, “Butter, I think we’re getting low on butter……We need more of those little yogurts for Robert…..Better get another gallon of milk……”

It takes me longer than it takes Paul, I’ll freely admit that, but on the other hand I come home with the things we’re going to urgently need in half an hour. I know, though, that as a “only what’s important this minute” thinker, Paul is exasperated when I take longer at the store than he thinks I should, and so when he’s standing over the skillet waiting for what I’ve run out for, I try to be accommodating. Tonight I raced through the store so quickly that when I came to a sudden halt for shredded cheese, I startled another woman badly enough that she braked her cart, too, probably thinking there was a dangerous animal in the aisle ahead.

On my way out of the store, I saw a couple with a baby. The mom was wearing sweatpants and a ponytail, and the guy with her looked young and like he’d rather be somewhere else. I was thinking, as I always do when I see something like this, that it must be hard to do this kind of life if it’s not what you want: if you want to be out late, if you want to drink until you stop being aware of what’s around you, if you want to sit down in a restaurant instead of getting take-out like this couple was doing, if you want to be–or be with–someone who wears tight clothing and tall heels and lipstick.

But I, I was rushing out of the store with my bags like I’d won some sort of contest: I got in and out of the store in twenty minutes, AND I got a bunch of stuff we needed, PLUS I remembered to get the egg nog that Paul had suddenly remembered a few days ago and that I thought we weren’t going to be back to the store to get before we did our late Christmas celebration. I felt happy and cheerful, and I felt like this was about the level of excitement I like in my life: to be pregnant, and to have children growing up at home, and to have been quick at the grocery store.

This is the kind of life I like, not the kind I got stuck with, and if Paul was like that guy who looked like he wanted to be somewhere else, it wouldn’t change how I felt: I wouldn’t be sorry we’d moved into this kind of life, I’d only be sorry that he didn’t like it here too.

At our house we celebrate Christmas as a cultural holiday. That is, we’re not Christians, and so we celebrate it not as The Birthday Of Christ Which We Celebrate By Giving Presents To Each Other, but instead as a holiday of pine trees and sparkling lights and special foods and pretty cards and thousands of years of winter holiday traditions.

This has caused some unrest in my family of origin and in Paul’s, since both of those families have always considered it a holiday that belongs rightly only to people who are Christians. Anything else is a secular bastardization. If you don’t worship Jesus, you don’t get twinkling strings of lights, cookies with little sprinkles, or a new stereo.

I am lucky, in that my family doesn’t push it. In fact, they will go too far the other direction: not wanting to sing Christmas carols, for example, because many have religious themes and we might feel pressured. Not wanting to say grace before Christmas dinner, since we might feel cornered. We feel like recovering alcoholics: “No, no, please go ahead. We have to learn to deal with these everyday situations.”

Paul’s family has no problem pushing it. His mom will tell us that she went to the Christmas Eve service, and that she doesn’t understand “people” who don’t go to the Christmas Eve service: it’s not Christmas without church. She’ll send the children Bible story books. Paul’s dad laughs about how Robert has never believed in Santa Claus, but then he’ll turn serious and say, “But that worries me: Does he believe in the Lord Jesus Christ?” Listen, all I’m saying is that the child doesn’t believe in culture-based fictional characters invented to elicit good behavior from the masses. Interpret that as you will, old man.

What a cheery Christmas entry! I am feeling a little cranky because Christmas is over and we still haven’t celebrated it. I had thought it would feel good: that normally the fun would be over but instead ours was still coming. It does not feel good. It feels like this is a holiday that is enhanced by so many people doing the same things at the same time. It feels like we missed it, and that any celebration we do in two days will be a sham, like when you have stomach flu on your birthday and try to make up for it a week later. It’s not the actual day any more, and that matters.

Just as when you’re throwing up on your birthday, though, it’s still a special day. This is still a special day; it is still Christmas. Merry Christmas to all who celebrate it, in our way or in any of the many other possible ways. And merry good wishes to everyone else.

It is Christmas Eve! My family always celebrates Christmas on Christmas Eve night, so normally right now we would be back from our Christmas Light Drive and we would be starting to open presents. Instead I am here at my computer, finishing a bowl of soup. This year my brother and his wife are visiting both families, and her family is first this year, so our family is celebrating later this week when they can be with us.

This has given me a funny feeling all day. Everyone else is beginning their celebrations; I am eating soup and it is a regular day. This morning, while Paul was watching the kids in the playroom, I cleaned the toilet and sink and floor in the bathroom. It’s nice to have it all shiny in there, but it isn’t Christmassy.

Well, while everyone else is suffering post-holiday funk, looking dismally at the heaps of trash and toys and listening to the pitter-pat of needles falling off the tree, we will be just starting on our piles of shiny presents. And then joining you in the post-holiday funk.

I have been so clumsy. My jeans are bootcuts that are nearly flares, and I keep getting the toe of one shoe snagged in the flare of the other pant leg. I go right down hard on my hands and knees, or else I manage to fling out my arms in time to catch a railing and hit my chin on it. There’s no saving this kind of tripping, it is only about limiting the damage. One day I will trip while carrying a baby, and I will finally have an answer to my frettings about what if that happened. In the hopes of not finding out, I walk bowlegged like a cowboy whenever I’m carrying anyone else, and I hold the baby in what I think of as a “crash position”: held so that I could continue to hold on to the baby with one arm even if I had to catch us with the other arm. These are the same jeans I wore pre-pregnancy, and I did not trip on them then.

A few days ago I ran into a door. I was glad I didn’t need medical attention: imagine trying to explain to a doctor that no, seriously, I ran into a door, REALLY, my husband wasn’t even home. When I’d heard that excuse used by battered women in movies, I’d always wondered why they used that one–because, how do you run into a door? Here’s how: you open a spring-hinged wood-trimmed screen door confidently, swinging it hard open so you can dart through before it slams behind you; you accidentally get your other foot in the way of the door’s opening, so the door bounces off that foot and slams back into your face as your face precedes your body through it. My ear was neon pink and had a huge white welt on it. The pain made me realize I would never be a boxer or even a casual street fighter. I sent up a thankful thought to whoever it was who made it so I have to have c-sections and will never experience labor unless there is a terrible blizzard and I am snowed in and have to deliver my baby myself onto a plastic garbage bag covered in the set of sheets that got caught in the hinges of the hope chest when they were nearly new and so even though they’re ripped I can’t stand to throw them out because they are otherwise perfect.