When I picked her up from school, Alexis should have been wearing a sign around her neck. It should have said something like, "Caution: Operating without a nap," or "Warning: Subject to wild mood swings." That is to say, she was not what I would call stable. Or happy. I take that back; she was happy. It's just that she was happy and then she was devastated and then she was happy and then she was devastated. And then she was happy. And then she was devastated.

And then momma wanted to slam her head through a wall.

To fill the time between dinner and an early-but-still-reasonable bedtime and, hopefully, avoid a bit of drama, I decided to start dragging out a couple of the Christmas trees. Now, first of all, shooooosh with your "it's too early" crap. Of the 14 days between now and Thanksgiving, I only have 8 of them with spare time for Christmas decorating and such. I'm starting to panic just a weeeeeee bit. Second of all, the kid has been asking to do some Christmas decorating for over a month. If I have to deal with a three-year old turned tiny sleep-deprived terrorist, I'm very willing to give in to her more reasonable demands.

So, I drug up all of the pencil trees and told Alexis to come help me decorate her tree. We started out with a little discussion around which tree was hers and the fact that all of the rest of them are mine.

It went really well.

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A few things:

1. It's really hard to deny that she is my kid when she throws that sort of epic fit over wanting the biggest Christmas tree. It almost brings a tear of pride to my eye.

2. It's even harder to deny that she is my kid when the method for ending that fit was to plug in the lights. She was all, "Oooooooooh . . . look! It's so pretty!"

3. You'd have to be a complete moron to not realize that she's my kid considering that when we were putting the ornaments on the tree, she repeatedly gazed lovingly at the multi-colored balls as she said, "Oooooh . . . shiiiiiny."

Now that I think about it, perhaps we should both wear signs around our neck. They should say: "Caution: Easily distracted by shiny things."

Oooooooh . . . shiiiiiny.