December 5, 2020

I woke to the sound of the garage door closing. It is a heavy steel door with automatic hinges that rattles the whole house when closing. I scanned the room, Joel was asleep to my right and Maxton was snuggled between two pillows on his back lost in dreamland. The sun was up shining bright through the crack in the blind where Jaxsen on an earlier curiosity adventure created a hole. The door open and closed again. I begrudgingly lifted myself from the bed and trudged down the stairs. I opened the garage door. It’s a disaster. We had taken the Christmas decorations from the attic the night before. We had accomplished putting both trees up in the house along with lights and star toppers. But there were still many decorations awaiting their destiny of annual cheer and joy. The four foot lumber jack purchased the previous year sat half out of his box now shredded by a determined four year old equipped with a pair of wire cutters he had successfully obtained from daddy’s workbench. Two Rubbermaid totes that held Christmas wrapping, bags, boxes and tissue papers along with lights and a teenage mutant ninja turtle stocking were strewn across the floor. To my right two drawers hung open their contents strewn about. Later in the day Joel will discover that Jaxsen had found one of the LEGO kits, a classic vintage Pokémon that he ripped into destroying the packaging and ruining the instruction booklet. I immediately begin grumbling my classic phrase “this is not okay”. Jaxsen is no where to be seen so my search begins. I hear soft scratching noises coming from the front room. Making my journey from the garage to the front/play room I notice Jaxsen has plugged in the Christmas tree. Rounding the corner there he sits, five strands of lights surround him. Including a new set that he unboxed himself. He has three of the light strands plugged together and is troubleshooting the best a four year old can why his new strands of lights are not making the tree work. I start in with my disappointment to his destruction in the garage and ask why he has all these Christmas things. He is crying now saying over again and again “I’m sorry mommy, I’m sorry.” We return to the garage together were I tell him multiple times that “this is not okay”, it is not your job and you shouldn’t be in the garage without mommy or daddy. Another round of Im sorry mommy’s while I attempt to clean up the disheveled Christmas paraphernalia. Returning to the house there is an ice cream bar wrapper lying on the floor. “Jaxsen did you eat an ice cream bar?” “No mommy, I didn’t.” My eyebrows raise as I pick up the wrapper and deposit it into the trash. Returning to the front room to unplug the extra lights and find the main plug for the tree I stumble across a small piece of chocolate shell with a smidge if ice cream. “Jaxsen, you did eat an ice cream bar. Look at this.” Jaxsen with big surprised puppy dog eyes says “I’m sorry mommy, so sorry!” I had no response. This is our life, it has been our life for as long as I can remember. This immensely curious intelligent young boy brings me to the brink of my sanity and then he does and says the cutest things like Munsday referring to any given day and time and you can’t help but laugh. “Lord give me strength”