Life, though amazing and wondrous of late, can be ever so complicated. This evening, just shy of seven o’clock, Sean was still at work, the girls were at the zenith of their nightly I-need-you-and-I-must-do-everything-at-an-eardrum-bleeding-decibel, I hit the proverbial wall. The ligaments holding this little Rockette wanna-be in my belly made themselves known, declaring it quitting time and leaving me feeling as if a 15 pound boulder might just base jump from my uterus and break through my pelvic floor (please don’t humiliate me in the comments by saying that what I have just described isn’t possible with the female anatomy, I take care of it, but I don’t totally grasp the whole architecture therein.)

The chicken I’d set in the wok was sputtering, blazing hot meteors of thick balsamic and chipotle marinade were rocketing from the wok and out into the kitchen, it was at this precise moment that Avery clapped her hands around my legs, wedged her head near my aforementioned, aching pelvic floor and began swaying with remarkable force for a person of less than 36 inches.

Splat.

Hiss.

Pop.

“What’s doin’, mama?” Briar asked as she walked in trailing a three foot boa, a 2.5 foot string of faux pearls and wearing my sports bra pageant sash style over her dress.

“Honey, ya gotta go. Mama needs to finish dinner, take Ave.”

KaPling.

Sizzle.

Kts, kts, kts, CRACK.

“What’s that?” She asked moving swiftly toward the sound and potentially disfiguring crackles coming from the stove top.

“Out. NOW. GET OUT BOTH OF YOU NOW!” They scampered off and my self-worth as a mom hopped on the back of the increasingly painful throbbing beneath my belly.

“And on one, two, three we’ll jump and have her on her knees…” this followed by a maniacal cackle.

It was not a banner day, despite a still blissful halo around the frame of my future.

So, with that, I’ve decided to post pictures of tree shopping.

It doesn’t get much simpler than Christmas tree shopping. Unless of course it is Christmas tree shopping in Vermont.