It was a grim morning indeed when I woke from an excellent dream to the sad realization that not only did I not have unlimited kissing access to Tom DeLonge, I probably never would have unlimited kissing access to Tom DeLonge, or even limited kissing access. Plus, it is grey and bleh outside, and there is so much laundry to do, and so much of that laundry smells like pee, and speaking of pee I should attend to the cat box today. Oh, god. If I could be sure of getting back into that same dream, I would call a sitter and then go back to bed.

I’ve read that many pregnant women have unpleasantly vivid anxiety dreams: baby is born a monster, baby has been misplaced, etc. So I realize it may cause some resentment when I say that my pregnancy dreams are that Logan (Matt Czuchry) from The Gilmore Girls is my boyfriend.

Even in the dream I’m incredulous, but what can I do? He doesn’t seem to mind the weight problem, the pregnancy, or our age/income/background difference, so why should I? It’s not always Logan; sometimes it’s Angel (David Boreanaz) from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Or Steve Burns from Blue’s Clues.

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.