I’m a bad, bad person. Or at the very least a bad, bad Blogger! And now we’re on vacation. Va.Ca.Tion. You’d think that I’d have all this time to catch up on my Blogging needs. We aren’t even technically going anywhere. We’re having a Staycation this week, and yet, I’ve just not been able to make the time or summon the energy to do some much-needed Blogging. Anywhoo, here we are, at long last. It’s only two days until Christmas (well, technically 1 day, 14 hours and 10 minutes). And I do know that Santa will not be bringing a baby girl in his sleigh for us this year, BUT the motto has now officially become “We may have a New Year’s Baby or a ‘In Two Year’s Baby’!” It looks like we’ll be licensed and approved and all that official broo-ha-ha on December 30th; then we wait. We’re added to the pool of waiting families. And. We. Wait.

Our final home inspection and interview last week went very well. Though Mike was disappointed that after spending half a Saturday cleaning the garage, Joy didn’t even open the door to peek her head in! She said ours was the most to-code house she’s seen and that we’ve flown through the Home Study faster than any of her other families. Yay us! She also got to meet the boys before leaving. She asked them what they would do with a baby sister. Zach immediately launched into a lengthy explanation of how he would take one of the baby toys that squeaks and then he would run and hide and squeak it until the baby came crawling to find it. This is a baby that we’re talking about right? And not a dog and squeaky toy? Anyway, they did very well and didn’t say anything inappropriate! :) And thank goodness she didn’t see the behavior that the boys displayed on Day One of Vacation.

School ended on Friday. After finishing my last music classes of the year, and Matthew getting to make a gingerbread house at school and perform in their Winter Concert, we were all ready for some down-time. Then Saturday morning broke. Within moments of being awake on our first official day of vacation I was saying things like, “Um, hello, Santa’s watching, you know.” And “Winter Vacation is going to be LONG,” and “maybe I’ll have to sign these boys up for Winter Vacation Daycare.” It was like the boys had forgotten how to behave…at home…and with each other…and with parents. The behavior really escalated at, oh joy, the grocery store.

I dropped Mike and the boys at Safeway and then went to run a couple of errands. I called Mike to see if I could stop at the ATM or if he needed me to come to the store to help out. What I got was a teeth-gritted, grumble of a response. I deciphered the message as: Things are not going well. Back-up. I need back-up. STAT. My immediate inward cocky-mom response was, C’mon, I deal with wild boys at the grocery store all the time. How bad can it be?

Um, bad.

I find Mike and the boys in the dairy aisle. Neither boy makes eye contact with me and Mike shoots me a pained, how-dare-you-leave-me/slash/get-me-outta-here look.

“So, uh, what happened?” I carefully ask.

“Well, they were acting all wild,” Mike starts. I nod. Tell me something I don’t deal with every week…every day. “And I had told them repeatedly to stop, to settle down. Zach was holding on to the side of the shopping cart, and then I turned to get milk out of the fridge, and I heard a big crash. Matthew apparently had also jumped on the side of the cart tipping it over and pulling the whole thing down on top of them.”

Well, that’s definitely never happened before. That’s definitely some of the worst grocery store behavior in Martin Family history. I kind of wanted to laugh though (just a tiny bit) at the image of our two children, limbs flailing, pinned under a shopping cart. Kinda serves ‘em right.

“Did anything get broken?” I ask.

Mike grumbles, “No. Thankfully, there was just orange juice in the cart, and I hadn’t gotten the eggs yet.” He shook his head and I could see that what actually got broken was a little of Mike’s ego. Yeah, you don’t want to be the parent with the kids who pull a whole freakin’ cart down.

Thankfully, ever since Shopping Cart Incident ’09, things have settled down a bit. I’m no longer praying for school to somehow magically, inexplicably start early. I’m no longer threatening coal-in-stockings several times a day. And Matthew even cried yesterday when Zach was leaving with me to go the gym/kids’ club (Matthew didn’t want to go, and therefore didn’t want Zach to go either; he’d miss his brother too much).

Maybe Santa will be good to us after all. Then again….we do still have a day and several LONG hours to go…