I'll have a blue Christmas

There is a mouse that is crapping in my knife drawer. One day, I was blithely pulling a knife from the drawer to chop some onions, when I noticed tiny black flecks all over. My first thought was, SWEET, some chocolate sprinkles! But then, to my horror, realization dawned and I knew they were TURDS. Dean has purchased large boxes of poison and there are tiny teeth marks to prove they are being eaten, but the mouse WILL NOT DIE. Each day, my drawer, now emptied of knives, bears the telltale evidence of a nocturnal rodent visit, tiny black pieces of excrement taunting me. Even the cats have been no help. They can puke on command, but they can't manage to catch one measly mouse.
On the bright side, the house is finally decorated for Christmas, and it is ever so much more cozy. Remind me why we take Christmas decorations down each year? The living room is so snug and colorful and softly lit and the house smells like Yankee Candle Christmas Wreath and hot apple cider. The hot apple cider is Dean's idea. Every time I tried to approach the ornament boxes, he would scream "WAIT!" and go tearing into the kitchen and frantically start piling orange peels and cinnamon sticks in a saucepan. Meanwhile, I twiddled my thumbs and rolled my eyes as he got the Christmas music flowing and the cider mulling. Then inevitably just as we began, there was a nap to be had or a lunch to be made or a diaper to be changed. As a result, there are a lot of half-naked oranges lolling about on the countertops.
We have two trees this year, one in the living room, and one in the family room. The one in the living room is a live tree that Dean and Frankie picked out a few days ago. Frankie was besotted with it because it is a Blue Spruce and she loves all things blue. On Thanksgiving, we arrived at my mom's house a good hour before the meal was going to be served and she immediately parked herself on a little blue chair at the kid's table and refused to get up. We couldn't figure out why, she kept just saying she was fine, she didn't want to go play, no problem that dinner was not going to be for a while, she'd just sit there for a bit. Finally, it dawned on my mother that she didn't want to get up because of the paralyzing fear that her friend Andrew might park himself on HER blue chair. She does the same thing at BSF when it is quiet time. All the kids pick a towel to lie down on, and Frankie is always the first kid to be like thirty seconds into her snack and then saying she's done so she can high-tail it over to her favorite blue towel. All the other kids are drinking cup after cup of grape juice and asking for seconds on their animal crackers and she is spread-eagled possessively in a corner over her blue towel.
Molly is enjoying the Christmas season, too. She has become inordinately fond of these pewter ornaments that are shaped like a really big quarter. She puts them in her mouth and crawls around with them all day with her cheeks stretched out around them like the oval-shaped face of the Hamburglar.
And finally, I have gotten all I want for Christmas since my daughter, despite the appearance of a low IQ because of the carrying of large metal objects in her mouth, when asked during Goodnight Moon where the balloon was, actually pointed at it with her middle finger, instead of looking up at the ceiling fan.