It’s a lazy day after Christmas.  The kids are  busy, busy, busy with all their loot, people are grazing on Christmas left overs, I’m returning customer support calls. Then the baby gets sick and throws up all over his bed. We assemble a crisis team. Hubby hands out plastic gloves; I strip baby down and bath him in the laundry room sink.  Hubby takes the crib apart, hand washes everything and starts the first of five loads for the washer.  An hour later, baby is clean, happy and eating a cracker.  Then, he throws up again…and again.

After a second round of commando cleanup, the Christmas Honeybaked ham isn’t looking so good. Happily I put it back in the fridge and opt for some water.

My other two sons are still in their pajamas  – a luxury that only happens a few days a year when a family of five has no place to be.  After four hours of Guitar Hero, I decide the ten year old needs a break.  I have a few hundred hours of arcade games behind me.  That’s right, I tell my son and nephew, I had to put a quarter in for every single game I played and I played A LOT.  “That’s lame,” one replies unsympathetically.  They don’t know who their dealing with. I slip the strap over my shoulder and choose  “Rock Me All Night Long”.  The kids start snickering. Strumming proves to be a bit of a challenge but I’m getting the hang of it, I think, until I am being booed off Guitar Hero’s stage.  The sting is real as my laughing ten-year old son takes the guitar back to start his hundredth song. He strums it like a pro hitting every note perfectly. I vow to practice when the kids are sleeping.
With the baby back in bed safely, with lots of clothes and no covers (five loads from vomit and five normal family loads are my limit), I  move on to try the three-year old’s toys.  Sesame Street games, building sets, train sets and more train stuff; I’m already bored.  You do have to fake it until you make it when you have Thomas the Train fans in the house.  I start drooling worse than my toddler, who drooled worse than a Saint Bernard.

I’m yearning to try Guitar Hero again.  Of course I’ll have my spotlight alone tonight when the kids are passed out from the results of hyper consumerism.  The moonlight is here and the family room is getting ready for Mama’s descent into Rock stardom. Of course that’s assuming the baby is sleeping soundly too.