It’d been taking my daughter forever and a half to comb her hair in the morning. She’d walk around with a brush in her hand, half-heartedly thwacking at her mane every now and then, and almost every morning I’d end up yelling at her to “Get in the bathroom, shut the door, and do not come out until your hair is brushed!” So when she started making noises about perhaps wanting to cut her hair, I was thrilled.

A couple days ago, my brother and his friend and I got to talking about hair, and Locks of Love came up. “That’s it!” I shouted. “I never thought of that! She’ll love the idea!” I scurried over to the computer to do a little research, and when my daughter came home from a trip to town with her papa, I explained all about Locks of Love. She jumped right on board. (Interesting fact: did you know that 80% of donations come from children wanting to help other children?)

First, I washed her hair in the sink and then blew it dry. She tossed her hair about like in the shampoo commercials she doesn’t see.

“I’m missing my hair already,” she said.

I pulled her silky-smooth (and suddenly painfully beautiful) tresses back into a ponytail, braided it, and tied off the end.

Hair donations are supposed to be a minimum of ten inches—we were cutting more than twelve.

I measured once, measured twice. Giggling giddily, we admired, touched, and mourned her hair. And then I picked up the scissors and started snipping. At first, they didn’t make a dent, but then I figured out how to use just the point to take little cuts and soon the braid started to come free.

Right in the middle of all that snipping, my husband came inside. He stood in the door, his eyes wide. “You mean you were going to cut it without calling me in to watch?”

And then her short, choppy hair was swirling around her face, and I was holding a strawberry-blond braid in my hands. I stared at it, semi-shocked at what I had done, tears filling my eyes. I felt like I had just cut off my child’s arm.

I watched her closely, waiting for the hot tears of remorse, but they never came. She kept ruffling the back of her hair with her hand and tossing her head from side to side, saying “It’s so light!”

“You look funny,” her sister said, appalled.

I’d never hacked off a ponytail before, so I didn’t know what it would look like. The sides swooped down long around her face, while the hair went up in the back, stacked-fashion.

We quickly discovered it was too short for a ponytail—her one, very clear specification, oops—but I showed her how we could pull back the top to keep it out of her eyes, and she was satisfied.

We put the braid in a zip-lock bag, wrote her name and address on a piece of paper (so she’ll get an official acknowledgment from Locks of Love) and made a quick trip to our local post office where we bought a padded envelop (according to the instructions), and sent her hair on its merry way to Florida.

Back home, my brother’s friend (her hairdo courtesy of my other daughter) and I tried to smooth out the sawed-off appearance, but we quickly gave up—it was way beyond our abilities.

For a while I kept suggesting we take her to a professional to get it fixed, but then I stopped talking about that, too.

My daughter loves her new chopped locks. And besides, hair grows.

This same time, years previous: one step above lazy, tomatoey potatoes and green beans, hats

The other week, I bought a couple bundles of leeks because I needed to photograph a potato and leek soup for an article that’s coming out in a local magazine.

The pictures were a flop (I’m not sure what I expected exactly, since it’s just a bowl of white creaminess and I don’t style my food at all), but the soup was delicious. The younger two kids fought over the leftovers.

I was surprised at how expensive leeks were—about a buck a leek (that sounds funny)—and it felt even more extravagant since I was only buying them for the white part. I couldn’t bring myself to toss the mountain of green stalks though, so I bagged them up and stuck them in the fridge, thinking I might use them in a beef soup.

However, instead of the beef soup, I cooked up all that leeky greenness into a gigantic sausage-leek quiche. It was a fabulous quiche, a quiche made all the more fabulous because the star ingredient was originally destined for the compost bucket (shame on me).

Never again will I toss the leek tops. I can think of a million uses for them now—pretty much any dish that calls for sauteed onions.

Giant Sausage and Leek Quiche

½ (the bigger half) recipe lard and egg pastry
4-8 cups chopped leek greens
1 pound ground sausage
2 cups cheddar cheese
½ cup Parmesan cheese
1 ½ cups milk
4 eggs, beaten
1/4 rounded teaspoon salt
1/4 rounded teaspoon black pepper

Line your biggest pie pan (mine is a 10-inch, earthenware monstrosity) with the pastry and crimp the crust.

Brown the sausage in a large pot over medium high heat. Transfer the meat to a large mixing bowl, leaving the drippings in the pan.

Return the pot to the heat and add the leeks (and a pat of butter if the drippings were meager). Saute until tender and brilliant green. Add the leeks to the bowl of sausage. Add the cheeses and toss to combine. Put the cheese and meat mixture into the pastry-lined pan.

In a small bowl, mix together the eggs, milk, and seasonings. Pour over the meat and cheese. Bake the quiche at 350 degrees for 40-50 minutes, or until the center is puffy, golden brown, and set. Cool for 10 minutes before eating.

This same time, years previous: Christmas 2010, windows at dusk-time, spaghetti carbonara, marmalade-glazed ham, for my walls, Christmas 2008

So some mice had a disco party on my kitchen counter the other night. They were leaping and prancing around like they owned the joint, or like they were practicing for the Nutcracker.

My husband hauled our half-asleep black cat over to the party and—shazaam—one of the mice was no longer dancing.

The cat now owns a free indoor pass (at least until the infestation is under control).

We trekked around the neighborhood, handing out festive tins of crack (and some bags of peppernuts and a couple lip balms). The kids were boinging all over the place.

Note to self: next year, practice approaching houses and knocking on doors before letting the kids do the real thing. The littlest twit of yours, especially, would benefit from some basic instruction.

When I was packing up the Christmas goodies, my daughter entered the kitchen bearing an old National Geographic. “What’s this?” she asked, showing me a picture of a dead, bruised and battered little boy.

I scanned the caption. “It’s a war in another country. A bunch of people were killed, including some children.”

As I scribbled Christmas trees and drew stars on my note cards, she peppered me with questions. How old was he? Did he have any brothers and sisters? Where are his parents? And, Look! They put all his toys beside him on the bed.

I watched her out of the corner of my (misty) eye, waiting for her face to crumble and her shoulders to hunch forward. But they never did.

I made a cheese ball and even though I haven’t eaten it yet (I wrote this part of the post on Christmas Eve), I know it’s the best cheese ball ever and that it’s going to be a part of the rest of my life, so there.

Bacon-Jalapeno Cheese Ball
Adapted from The Homesick Texan

I bought fresh cilantro specifically for this recipe, but when I got it out of the fridge it had mysteriously turned into parsley. (I hate when that happens.) So I used some dried cilantro (that tastes more like cardboard than cilantro) and a tablespoon of chopped fresh parsley just for anyhow.

8 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
½ cup sharp cheddar cheese
2 tablespoons chopped cilantro
1 clove garlic, minced
1 teaspoon lime juice
½ teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1/4 teaspoon cumin
pinch of chipotle powder (or cayenne)
pinch of salt
5 pieces of bacon, fried, crumbled, and divided
1 jalapeno, minced and divided
1/4 cup chopped pecans, toasted

Mix together all the ingredients down through the salt, plus half of the bacon and half of the jalapeno. Shape the cheesy goop into a ball with your hands.

Mix together the remaining bacon and jalapeno, as well as the pecans, put them in a plate or shallow bowl, and roll the cheese ball around in the crumbles until it’s nicely coated.

Cover the cheese ball with plastic and chill for an hour before serving with crackers (though I like my cheese ball at room temperature—it spreads better).

They’re back at it again.

This time around, the tools are fancier.

It made for a great holiday project, something to get them outside after gorging on candy and cookies.

I had a minor break down at our Christmas eve service. Three of my kids were in a little skit—dirty sneakers and dress-shirt collars poking out from under their robes, plastic ivy and pipe cleaner laurel wreaths, that sort of thing. Nickel was Quirinius. He had to stand up front beside his big brother (Cesar Augustus) and unfurl the registry scroll. But the scroll wouldn’t unfurl, so he tossed it out, as though a quick flick of the wrist would fix everything, but instead of unrolling, the scroll flew out of his hand and landed on the floor with a thunk.

That’s when I lost it, a giant belly laugh half exploding out of me. I pressed my lips together quick and held my breath, but that only made the belly trembles grow all the more violent. My eyes watered, my shoulders shook—I was helpless against the hilarity.

At that moment, when I was physically and emotionally completely out of control, at that moment all the tension of the last couple hours—all the yelling and running around and cleaning up the house and getting everyone through the shower and trying to be jovial because it’s Christmas Eve for Pete’s sake—all that tension peaked and I realized that—oh my word, I am not stable! I am going to start sobbing because my child just hurled his scroll on the ground!

I didn’t do The Ugly Cry, thank goodness. A couple more stifled gasps and the strain eased up. I was even composed enough to wink at my boys without falling to pieces, whew.

Supper restored me the rest of the way.

Even though we’ve told the children that it’s us doing the gift giving, our Santa pretending makes my younger daughter upset, almost angry even.

This morning, after the stockings and hoopla, she told me, once again, that she knows there’s no Santa. “Tell me for real, Mama. I know it’s you and Papa.”

“This really bothers you, doesn’t it,” I said. “Okay, so yes, Papa and I buy the gifts, but we like to pretend it’s not us, just for fun.”

“And—tell me the truth—you’re the tooth fairy, too!”

“Yes.”

“Who does the tooth fairy more, you or Papa?”

“I do.”

She smiled, pleased (and relieved?) to finally get a straight answer.

Later, she asked if she could tell the other kids the truth. They already know, I said, but she wanted to tell them anyway. So she did, and the big kids said, Yeah, we know, but for her, this truth-telling statement was big, I could tell. The air was cleared. She could finally relax.

(Also, at bed time tonight, I asked her what her favorite part of the day was, and she said playing in the field and getting her feet muddy on the swings. Hello, honey! Today was CHRISTMAS and playing in the field was YOUR FAVORITE THING?!)

My older daughter took her earrings out for the first time.

Except they were stuck, so my husband had to use a pair of pliers to wrench them from her ears, smooshing the earrings in the process. She put in a pair of dime earrings she had made for herself, but later, after she took them out so she could go roughhouse, she couldn’t get them back in. She needed the lightweight studs, but I, thinking they were too damaged to use, had thrown them away.

So she and her father meticulously went through the garbage, searching for the tiny studs, which they somehow found, cleaned, and made useable. The earrings slipped back in (with a little numbing cream), and the dreaded holes-growing-shut disaster was averted.

I read the first couple chapters of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever before bed on Christmas Eve, and we finished it up tonight. So much of our last 24 hours coincided with parts of the story: the kids acting out the Christmas story during our church service (my daughter was Mary—You really should’ve thumped that doll on the back like Imogene did, I told her), the bit about Imogene not being able to take out her hoop earrings for fear the holes would grow shut (Sound familiar, sweetie?), and the ham, of course.

We didn’t bear ours down the center aisle of the church, though. We just ate it.

Hey! Unto you a child is born!

Peace and joy to you, sweet friends. Merry Christmas!