We trekked down to my parents’ house for Thanksgiving. My sisters came with their families. It was nice to have everyone together, even though it is somewhat overwhelming after a while.

We celebrated November birthdays while we were there, convenient since my oldest had his birthday last week and my daughter had hers on Thanksgiving. My girlie is five. Sigh.

Visiting my parents means a six hour drive, including a stop for lunch. Have I mentioned how I love the dvd player? The headphones almost fit our youngest now, and since he’s all about Dora, he and the girlie happily watched several hours of Dora episodes. We don’t watch much tv at home, so trips like this are a huge treat for them. We also visited my in-laws and I got to meet my new-to-me niece, who will be one Dec. 26. Time flies.

Of course, the kids were worn out by the time we got home. Our youngest did manage a car nap, so he rebounded quite quickly and accompanied me to Target before dinner. The girlie doesn’t think she needs a nap, so she was quite a mess by the time I got her and her little brother in the tub this evening.

They have a holiday gift tree at my daughter’s preschool. This year it is just colored paper ornaments in a basket. I’m not sure if someone complained about the tree last year or they just haven’t located it yet. Either way, we picked two kids’ names out of the basket. We chose a four year old girl and a three year old boy, each with a gift wish.

When we did this last year, my daughter wasn’t really old enough to understand what it was. I explained then that we were buying gifts for friends that we didn’t know yet, and maybe we wouldn’t ever know them, but it was a good thing to do. I told her that the gift we gave might be the only one that little girl would get because sometimes Moms and Dads just don’t have the money to buy their kids anything, and that makes me sad because kids shouldn’t have to worry about that.

This year there’s a suggested $25 limit on gifts. As I looked through the basket of wishes, I was saddened by the number of tags with boys’ and girls’ names and requests for jeans or a sweater. Should a 6 year old wish for a sweater for Christmas? I don’t think that was on my wishlist at age 6. My sisters and I used to go through the Penney’s catalog, marking all the things we’d like to get for Christmas. Toys, toys and more toys.

Last night at Target I picked up the toys on the wish ornaments, a Littlest Pet Shop set and some Diego Mega Blocks. I told my husband about the other tags at the preschool, requests for clothes. He said it was okay if I wanted to go back and pick out a couple more names if they don’t all get filled next week.

We now have a teenager in our house. I suppose I knew it would happen eventually, I just didn’t want to believe it. I hope we’re doing okay as parents. I mean, well, we’ve never done this before. Poor kid – his whole life has been an experiment. We’re just going through trying to make sure he learns the things he needs to know, but do we really know what that is? Have we built a strong enough foundation for him to stand on as he grows and reaches out more and more on his own? I hope so. It seems like it, right? He’s a good kid. And he’s damn smart.

These next years are hard. It’s hard to be a teenager, I know that. Something tells me being a teenager’s parent isn’t exactly a cake walk.

But man does it hurt. The kids decided to sit on the kitchen stools. This would be fine except that they were sitting on the wrong side of the island and the littlest was trying to reach all the buttons on the radio. I told my daughter to get down and as I moved my youngest off the stool he was on, it fell. It fell onto my two little toes. And it really, really hurts. And I yelled. I yelled really, really loud.

My two little toes are much bigger than their counterparts on my other foot. And they are much more black and blue than their counterparts, probably due to the fact that the toes on my other foot are their normal size and color. I am considering banning stools.

This seems like a good enough reason to skip the workout tonight.