My Daughter Cannot Sing

One of the things I have learned as a result of my kids receiving iPods from Santa is that my daughter cannot sing. At all. I mean, she is BAD.

Also, she thinks that the lyrics to "Rich Girl" include: "if I were a broken girl."

I tried telling her what the actual lyrics are. So has Mark. She thinks we are wrong.

But boy, she is happy while she sings. And right now, she is as close to ecstasy as a seven-year-old should ever be, because she is singing along to her iPod WHILE using her *best* present.

And what could trump an iPod nano, already preloaded with alllllll your favorite songs, you ask? A whiteboard.

Yes, that's right. You know how kids will be asking for something all season long, BEGGING for it, and then two days before Christmas they will suddenly pull this thing out of a hat and you are foolish for not understanding that THIS was what they truly desired, this and only this? That's what Kira did with the whiteboard. More than life itself, my daughter wanted, nay, NEEDED, CRAVED a dry-erase board. So my parents did a last-minute switcharoo of a present they had intended and went out and got her an 18x22" whiteboard with markers and an eraser. That thing has not been out of her reach since she opened it. I woke up this morning to the smell of dry-erase markers, because she was sitting on the floor in my room, drawing on it. (and I think it is cruel how early kids get up on the day AFTER Christmas. C'mon, we just got up at an insanely early hour the previous morning, after pretty much not sleeping AT ALL Christmas Eve. Don't we get a break? No.)

Speaking of breaks, I did get a pretty good break the rest of the day. The kids played an hour or so on the PS2 this morning, then we mostly did the veg-out thing until early afternoon, when we got our thank-you notes finished up and in the mail. Then we watched a movie together, then more veg-out time. And now, oh boy, it's time to tuck Kira into bed.

Tomorrow will be a day of cleaning and getting the house in order. I'll probably leave the Christmas tree up for a few more days, although there are no promises. It could disappear at any moment.

So how long do you leave your tree up? Are you a day-after-Christmas person? A Christmas afternoon person? Ephiphany? New Year's? Whenever you get sick of it? (that last one is me.) Ro's is out already. How about you? mk