Rags.

Luke had his holiday performance with his classmates the other night; it was so cute you could pinch it. Why don't I have pictures of it to add to the blog? Well, that is the subject of some inter-spousal argument, but I will fill in the blanks to say that Dave is the BEST and he does tons of stuff for us during his every waking hour, and I couldn't ask for a better person to spend my life with or to have as the father of my children. Oh, and yes, we have video, just not pictures.

If I were able to edit the video and post it online like a modern techno-mom, you would see Luke in the back row looking a little star-struck for the first song and then fully hamming it up for "Santa Claus is Coming to Town." Those of you who have spent any time with him in the last few weeks know that he has the most enthusiastic, never-ending version of the song you will ever hear. When he got to his favorite line ("You better not POUT!") he nearly shook the rafters with his vehement fist-shaking, foot-stomping pout. But the best part was when it was all over and he came off the stage over to meet us, breathless and red-faced, and declared, "That was FUN!" A star is born.

Lately when Luke is mildly mad (but not mad enough to justify a foot-stomping pout), he has started saying "Rags!" Turns out that it comes from the Charlie Brown Christmas special where Charlie and his friends say, "Rats!" and here Luke was all this time thinking that they were saying, "Rags!" The other day when I told him he couldn't watch TV instead of taking a nap, he told me, "Rags, Mommy, rags!" I didn't know whether to laugh or feel put upon...

Good news on Zach: The little spout of hair on the back of his head is just starting to get long enough where it can turn a corner and head back down to earth instead of sticking straight up. Bad news on Zach: He now has cold #2, so we are all suffering from lack of sleep just as we're getting ready to travel. The doc says in winter they get colds as often as every 10 days. To that I say, Rags.