...And to all, about two hours of sleep at a stretch

Hey! Look what I got for Christmas!



[What follows is from the Christmas letter my wife and I sent out this season, our first ever. Feel free to gag or ridicule as the mood strikes you. Ten years ago, when I was stoned and playing Resident Evil, I never suspected that I would be the author of a Christmas family newsletter, and I suppose it's only a matter of time before I'm dressing up my rugrats in sweaters and photographing them for our holiday greeting cards. Ack, ptui!]

You’ll have to forgive us — we’ve never before presumed to write a Christmas letter, our lives being usually uninteresting plods from home to work to Kroger to church and home again, but 2006 has been a landmark year for our family, and word nerds that we are, we didn’t feel we could plant it in the ground and throw dirt on top of it before at least saying a few words to mark its passing. So if you’ll allow us, here’s the Reed Family Eulogy for 2006, the Year that Messed With Our Heads.

I used to kid myself that I loved change, welcomed it, embraced it like an old love come home again. The years 2002-2003, however, with their two moves across two states, three job changes, return to school, and newly-wedded bliss, taught me the truth: change just really stresses me the hell out. As long as things are going well, as long as I’m not unhappy, I want stuff to stay pretty much right where it is. I like my bacon chewy and my pancakes with chocolate chips in ‘em. I like my beer cold and my coffee dark, my shoes and my hairline to be where I left them, and my jeans to be as roomy as they were in high school.

That, of course, is not what happened this year. This year, just like four years ago, pretty much everything that could change, did.

We begin with school (dear God, school), in which I finally finish with a profitable degree. No more work until five, drive to campus, prop my eyelids open with toothpicks while building virtual processors or trying to hammer together a basic web service on a server held together with duct tape and happy thoughts (please support increased educational funding in your home state — we spent an insane amount of money for me to learn computer science using what was usually sub-standard and out-of-date equipment). No more writing code or doing calculus until two in the morning. No more Jennifer having to cook dinner.

The horror.

And it paid off in spades: new job, much better income, stability we hadn’t yet known. So what did we do with our newfound comfort? Save the money? Invest it? Start a college fund? Why, no, we did the sensible thing. We spent half of October in Europe.

Consider it a testament to our love for you that we bothered to come back. Florence stole our hearts away, as did two unbelievably wonderful friends that we made while there, and if it hadn’t been for all of you, we would have immediately begun discussing the pros and cons of expatriation. Instead we just ate way too much gelato and prosciutto and drank way too much wine and coffee. But we probably walked at least twenty miles a week, so we felt entitled.

The trip was our last big hurrah before beginning our own family, the kind of thing we just won’t be able to do for the next twenty years, so we figured, what the hey — we’ll even begin working on making those little money pits darling little children while we’re over there. First comes love, then comes marriage, etc.

Well, it worked, and looking back, it worked in proper Biblical fashion. We sat in the courtyard outside St. Peter’s Basilica, the largest and most Roman of all Roman Catholic churches, eating bread (well, prosciutto crudo sandwiches) and drinking wine. Our own informal communion. Afterward we both partook of the same apple, which was, appropriately enough, tart. So it makes sense that once we were driven out of the paradise that is Italy, chased by angels armed not with flaming swords but rather house payments and utility bills, we would Be Fruitful and Multiply. Like, immediately.

We have tentatively named him/her Imo. Imo Kartsanakis Schmeckenbecker. (S)he is currently about a centimeter and a half long and looks like a cross between a seahorse and a very lumpy tadpole. (S)he has a heart that beats and a disproportionately large head that is my genetic gift to him/her. We have video of this for your mocking pleasure. If we two are any indication of what this child is to become, then I think you’re all about to meet your very first hyper-literate wookie, sometime around the last week of July.

Just knowing of little Imo’s presence has already begun to transform us, and our lives have not yet altered one bit — well, Jennifer’s has, of course, what with all the swelling and the morning sickness and the exhaustion and the ABSOLUTELY PSYCHOTIC BEHAVIOR, PLEASE SEND HELP.

But despite the lack of real interruptions in our daily routines (Jennifer’s physical limitations excepted), suddenly life has changed very much indeed, and I know I can’t yet conceive of how it will continue to change. It began for me the night I learned of my impending fatherhood, when I lay down to sleep and one little thought — life as you have lived it is about to end — kept me up for the next few hours alternating between joyful excitement and white-knuckle terror. To this day, we still randomly scream “WHAT DID WE DO?”

Ever since that night, I find myself motivated to make positive changes, trying to become more organized, work harder, do everything I can to leap up the corporate ladder — I’m even training for my first half-marathon next spring, which I'd never dreamed of as a candidate for my to-do list. Jennifer is occupied with staying healthy, trying to be active despite the exhaustion, and just generally preparing herself for all the physical changes the next seven or so months will bring. I’d rather run the half, personally. Hooray for being a dude.

It’s that joy of being able to pee in the yard that makes me both want to wait on her hand and foot and mock her suffering, in true Reed family fashion. But before you judge me too harshly, ask me to tell you the story about how she mocked my pain as I cleaned up pound after pound of solid human waste out of our yard. It’s a real knee-slapper, and very much in keeping with the spirit of Christmas.

And in that spirit, we wish you all a happy holiday season. Don’t let your kids run rampant unless you’re just too tired to stop them, don’t nap too much unless your kids are driving you crazy, and don’t eat too much unless you really just want to. And if you don't have kids, then one day I suspect I will hate you.

Merry Christmas, all.