pasko-rama

eli dictated a letter to kelley for santa claus. in its entirity, it read:

dear santa,

hi santa. may i please have a light blue present, please? santa, will you wear a red suit?

love, eli

we decided that uncle james' porcelain pig was the perfect answer to eli's light blue supplication, so we set it out as a "from santa" gift. sorry james, but father christmas got the credit for this one. when eli is of age, we'll tell him the true tale of the light blue pig. he may be catching on already. when he saw penelope's stuffed pig, he immediately recognized it, "hey, that's from ross."

eli overheard me joking with kelley today about maury povich paternity test episodes. then he started mimicking, "i want to step up to the plate and be a man." admirable, but let's make sure he's actually the baby's daddy first.

http://picasaweb.google.com/larsen.will/paskorama/photo#s5149226291323641682

the first picture in this album was taken when kelley walked in on eli's "quiet time" the other day. he had apparently put on a pair of jeans backwards, and passed out on a tower of stuffed animals.

himig pasko (pictures to follow)

this year, christmas fell on sunday the 23rd.  as i left the house early on the morning of the 24th, the room which holds my camera's usb cable was heavily guarded by sleeping in-laws, so i was unable to get any pictures onto my laptop to blog on this trip.  i'll have to post those this weekend. this was the first year we really faced the decision of selling the santa pitch, or disuniting our family from the degrading undertones of american consumerism which have corrupted the very purest of our christian holidays. we folded like a paper airplane.

we asked eli if there were something he hoped santa would bring. he said, "something light blue". the color of the item was actually more important than the gift itself. eli helped kelley make a cup of chocolate milk for santa, which he left by the fireplace next to a sugar cookie and a dictated letter. for the reindeer, he left a plate of carrots by the back door. i have to admit, for all my inner conflict over lying to my son about a mythical gift bearing creature, it was about as cute as a puppy and a kitten snuggling each other next to an everyday item like a book, which only serves to call attention to how small they are.

as any parent of a three year old knows, opening presents loses its novelty at around two gifts. (for a one year old, it is actually somewhere mid unwrapping of the first gift.) when a child unwraps a toy, he wants to do something very irrational given the time constraints, and the number of adults watching him for their own entertainment. namely, he wants to play with it. eventually, you end up tearing toys out of your kids' hands and dragging them back to the gifting fields to finish their task. at one point i asked kelley if we should just open the rest of the presents another day. she said, "i just want these things off my floor." finally, we were bribing eli with chocolate. i actually said to him, "eli, if you want another piece of candy, you need to open another present." if i am not the embodiment of the american sellout, please tell me.

eli & pen

some pictures of the kids. these are the kinds of moments that are rarely captured on film and even more rarely occur in real life. shortly after the photos, they resumed their epic battle for possession of the green plastic fish.

santa's comin' to town

we stopped by the children's museum today to meet father christmas himself. penelope made the naughty list, while eli tried not to rock the boat. kelley was indifferent- she knows what's in my bank account.

one of santa's reindeer was humanely caged out front. i'm not sure which one this is, but i know for a fact it's not rudolph.

penelope's back (hey-la)

christmas in america is a magical time when people from around the nation bring their germs across the country to share them with their loved ones, and compound them with the germs of fellow travelers at intermediate destinations. usually for me, exposure to this spider web of disease translates into some sort of physical holiday misery, this year a crippling fever/sore throat combo. penelope also found herself afflicted by the december epidemic with a case of fifth disease, a cold/fever/rash that left her most unpleasant.

pen would wake up in the morning and commence crying for the next twelve hours. after a few days of this, kelley and i stopped expecting her to get better and just started hoping she would lose her voice. we quarantined the contagious penelope and her exposed brother. eli started out as understanding. then tolerant, perturbed, agitated, and finally, completely crazy out of his mind and unable 

to control his own actions. most of his time was spent madly running back and forth, screaming and jumping on furniture, the way a caged animal acts when the captivity causes it to finally lose its mind. it was humbling to watch kelley care for, feed, bathe nurture, and clean up after he kids, penelope distraught, and eli constantly screaming, if only to burn off the excess energy, me watching from the chair where i sat huddled in seven sweatshirts trying to figure out a way to get a glass of water from my mouth to my stomach without using my throat.

by the end of the week, we had begun to believe that we had unknowingly been entered in a daughter exchange program, so we were of course delighted when the daughter elves brought our little girl back early tuesday morning.

pen sleeps it off.

eli has a snow day.

the tiebreaker

latest ultrasound evidence reveals new baby larsen's gender as female. for those of you keeping score at home, that puts it at

men:2/women:3

i guess i'll have to return that moose rack i just got for the mantle and start buying some hugh grant movies.

1. (left) four fingers from the baby's hand.
(right) footprints.

2. it's still too early to tell, but she may be a seahorse.

3. this is kind of a tough one to make out, but you're looking down at the top of the baby's head & she's sucking her thumb.

i'm dreaming of a light blue christmas

living so close to the rocky mountains, kelley and i agreed that it just wouldn't be right running in to the wal-mart garden center to choose from one of myriad greenhouse grown, chemically enhanced pine trees. so we googled "chose and cut christmas tree lots in colorado", and with a couple of adresses in hand began our against all odds search for a family christmas tree. i asked eli what kind of christmas tree he wanted. he said "light blue".

penelope had been a little ill the night before, but seeing as how she seemed to be on the mend, i bundled the kids up in their snow clothes and packed some snacks. as we loaded the car, penelope had a crying fit so feirce, she actually threw up. now dads, with a fully loaded car, and two kids already buckled in their car seats, you could:

a. listen to your wife, scrap the trip, and drive straight to the pediatrician's office.

b. suggest we "just get started and se how she does" with no intention of ever turning back.

all those who chose b, read on.

toward the end of the hour drive up the mountain, things were unravelling pretty quickly. the kids were both crying, and kelly was getting carsick from turning around to feed them. the lot itself, to our great consternation, did not exactly "jingle our bells". a superficial inspection revealed nothing more than a handful of skeletal firs that made charlie brown's christmas tree look like the one at rockefeller center. faced with the possibility of accepting defeat, i quickly chose my only other option, in this case, another grueling hour in the car with sick and tired children, and my wife's extenuating patience to the u.s. forestry department's permit buying station, and a trek deep into the inexorable belly of the rocky mountain wilderness.

the highway's perpetual winding left kelley nausious, the driving conditions just one winter storm away from treacherous. having forgotten a saw, i stopped at a local "bargain barn" type establishment, also in search of snacks for the now famished and hysterical children in the back seat. walking by an "all a dollar" toy bin, i thought i might be able to salvage the day with a modest purchase. in my wearied stupor, however, i broke one of the cardinal rules of parenting: never buy two distinguishable toys for two different kids at the same time, as they will both immediately discard one (the orange dump truck) and fight over possesion of the other (the plastic fish).

cursing myself for making such a rookie mistake, we pressed on. in my truly myopic mindset, i pushed our pontiac bonneville to the very edge of its envelope, throttling the overweight and undertractioned vehicle across ice and snow as if it were engineered to navigate the very permafrost of the alaskan tundra. we picked a spot to pull off the road and commence our hunt. as the paths were completely snowed over, kelley opted to stay with pen at the top of the hill. i agreed, and slinging eli over my shoulder, procdeeded to race down the trail. we were going to have a father- son moment even if it ended like jack london's "to build a fire".

thinking about the long drive ahead of us, i sprinted frantically through the woods with what remaining daylight i had, eli now playing the role of a 35 pound medicine ball.

i scanned the trees as i ran, eli pointing to every waifish twig with a couple of pine needles on it saying, "dad, look at that one, chop it down! just chop that one dad, just chop it down!" we finally agreed on a modest fir, so i put eli down in the snow and started cutting. unfortunately, eli was completely unable to stand still, and kept running around and falling down, each time shreiking in sheer terror when the ice cold snow got on his hands and face. and so, i ran back and forth between tree cutting, and rescuing a little boy playing ernest shakleton realizing that nothing that goes on inside a $30 million cockpit is as dynamic or technically challenging as trying to orchestrate a succesful family outing. if anyone needs me, i'll be trying to scour the wretched stench of pine from my blackened soul.

kelley feigns satisfaction.

eli attends a nocturnal tree lighting.

the haggard old beast now sits in our living room. its gaunt frame struggles for life, but prays for the sweet release death will surely bring.