Since then, I’ve grown rather fond of our Friday dance-class schedule. This year we even threw tap into the mix, and the chaotic flurry of an armful of little girls frantically changing from whispery ballet slippers to loud, clacky tap shoes is pretty fun. I’ve finally sunk into the routine and had begun imagining this year’s recital: a natty little Gene Kelly-esque tap number, perhaps, followed by a watery, flowery snippet of Swan Lake.

I had plans to buy a Real Camera and everything. Get myself a new contact lens prescription so that I could actually see the stage. I had BIG plans. Epic. Huge, monstrous plans.

Then we went to class last Friday. As they greeted the kids, the teachers told them that the class would begin to rehearse its recital number that afternoon. A few minutes later, as I sat with the other mothers, the strains of an…oddly unfamiliar-familiar song drifted into the waiting area. Conversation came to a screeching halt.

Then one mother swallowed, loudly.”Is that…?” she started, unable to finish.

“Yes,” another mother replied. “My God. I think it is him.”

“Who?” I said, knowing only that this song did not sound like anything Gene Kelly had sung. IT WAS NOT NATTY.

A fourth mother slumped down in her chair, hands hopelessly splayed across her lap.

“It’s Barry Manilow,” she whispered.

Proof that you should NEVER LET YOUR GUARD DOWN:

The holidays were very quiet around these parts. I was able to rouse myself from the couch sickbed now and then to grudgingly remove new toys from their stunningly secure packages and even put a few together. On that subject: I remain stymied as to why today’s toy manufacturers insist upon1,252 twist ties and an enormous amount of unnecessary tape. In my day, I seem to remember the toys kind of just rattling around in their boxes, all those Cabbage Patch Kids and GI Joes and Rainbow Brites just banging back and forth amiably until released. Back then, there was probably even a picture on the side of the box showing how kids could just open one end and pour all the small choking hazards directly into their mouths YUM YUM YOU CHILDREN OF THE EIGHTIES STAND NOT A CHANCE

It was during one of these Christmastime toy dismantlings that I stabbed myself in the thumb with a particularly lethal plastic part. I now have a welt that is totally going to require a better story should it eventually end up as a scar. Something more along the lines of That Time I Got Lost In The Jungle And Had To Survive By My Wits and My Thumb, as opposed to OW-Polly-Pocket-roller-coasters-hurt.

Speaking of Polly Pocket roller coasters that hurt! Why do the instructions tell me to pre-assemble the trillion little coaster tracks if I only have to take them apart to fit them into the main, er, coaster/concert stage/t-shirt shop/WHY DIDN’T I BUY NICE BORING ORGANIC WOODEN TOYS apparatus?

I’m imagining the fine folks in charge of writing the instructions had a conversation much like this:

Instruction Folk #1: Now let’s see. We have plenty of confusing drawings. But what about words? What can we write here?

Instruction Folk #2: Words? Oh, right–you’re new here. Quick rule of thumb: Never use words. Only vague drawings that 37% resemble the actual toy. I mean, sure, you can throw in some arcane German or a little Swahili now and then, but you NEVER use English for toys sold in America.

Instruction Folk #1: Aha. Got it. What about this page? I have drawings of how the many tracks should pair, but honestly, when I tried assembling the toy myself, it really is impossible to put it together with the coupled tracks.

Instruction Folk #2: Even better! You’re a natural at this! You’ve stumbled upon what we around here call the Extra Step of Dratted Nonsense. We try to include at least one in every instruction manual. [slaps Folk #1 on back] Someone is going to do well at bonus time, I can tell.

Curse you, Polly Pocket (and Friends!). May you (and Friends!) somehow fall into the fireplace soon.

Yet the most I can seem to do is the bare minimum and then I just lie around on the couch. It has been while I am lying on the couch (I often ask for the vapors, like they always do in my Victorian novels, but I’ll be damned if a single person around here has the vapors; it’s all for better or for worse and through sickness and health UNTIL YOU NEED THE DAMN VAPORS) that it struck me that man, my standards for A Good Parent have fallen dramatically. Basically, I now suck. Cases in point:

• There was a time when Aura’s time with the iPad was strictly limited. A little Angry Birds, a little Princess Ph.D. (HAHAHA I MAKE MY KID PLAY SOMETHING CALLED PRINCESS PH.D.), then it was Off to Your Imaginative Play and Maybe One of Those Impressive Looking Shape Puzzles. This week, Aura has logged approximately two million five hundred thousand seven hundred and forty eight hours with the iPad. (That effin’ Muffin Knight, man. I can suddenly see junkies’ point.)
• Turns out you can say “Really? Don’t you want to watch one more show? Please?” with very little shame. You can even say it more than once an hour.
• Roald Dahl is getting a plaque somewhere in this house, once I get off the couch to order it. Reading aloud Charlie and the Chocolate Factory while lying-very-very-still-no-one-jostle-my-headache has bought me ample bonding time. You’d think all that talk of chocolate bars and melting chocolate and chocolate marshmallows would further upset my nauseous stomach, but nope. Apparently chocolate trumps all.
• Which brings me to my final Parent of the Year observation: Cookies and then more cookies from Trader Joe’s actually do a lot for a suddenly boring mother’s reputation. In fact, at dessert time around these parts, I may have been called the BEST MOTHER EVER.

Thank you, Trader Joe’s. Bless your packaged little heart.

1. Approach, rather lackadaisically, the toy catalogs that have recently arrived by the armload. Let the bright purple circling marker dangle loosely from your fingers, as to give the impression that Eh, You May Have Better Things to Do and Are Possibly Above This By Now.

2. Eventually flip pages loudly, murmuring now and then over an especially obnoxious-seeming Lalaloopsy doll or a particularly winsome 122-foot-long Hot Wheels racetrack.

3. When mother encourages you to indicate things Santa might want to bring, place careful checkmarks next to the most improbable items in the catalog, such as a Very Explodey-Looking Chemistry Set or a OMG HELL NO Ant Farm.

4. Randomly point out how suddenly very desirable a baby toy is, such as a foam bowling set or those really chunky little crayons made for tiny, chubby baby hands.

5. Furrow brow in confusion when mother bursts into tears, then calmly chew a cheese sandwich cracker as she begins her monologue on How Did You Get So Big, It’s Like You Were Only Born Yesterday, I Can’t Believe You’re Fiiiiiive. Consider offering her a tissue, then decide against it. Have another cracker instead.

6. Take a break from catalog browsing. For several days that border on many weeks. Inspire in family general sense of panic over a Santa list. Notice mother getting more wrinkly. Especially in the forehead area. So many…lines.

7. After 1,000th plea for an inkling of a Christmas list, grudgingly reclaim bright purple circling marker and trudge over to catalogs. After a few circles, discover within self a growing, urgent spirit of circling. Cackle wildly. End up with this.

(HELP EVERYTHING IS CIRCLED I DID THIS TO MYSELF AND WHAT THE HELL IS A RADIO CONTROL GIANT FLYING SHARK)

(ALSO: HAHAHA THE GUY FIERI “MINUTE TO WIN IT” VIDEO GAME. FINALLY, A PRESENT IDEA FOR ADAM.)

Yes, indeedy. It is one of those prefab gingerbread house kits, the kind of which I have avoided for most of Aura’s childhood, simply because I couldn’t put up with what I knew would be Adam’s protestations: “A pre-made gingerbread house? That’s ridiculous! Do you know how easy gingerbread is to make? Then you just cool it and cut it and whip up some royal icing and blah blah blah and blah blah blah and I’m making that superior face I know you hate but it’s like I can’t keep from doing it because I watch too much Bobby Flay.”

The thing is, I’m a big one for from-scratch baking (despite the fact that I detest cooking-cooking and shall detest it for all eternity). But who are we kidding? When am I going to have the time to bake and precisely measure gingerbread walls and roof shingles? As I explained to Adam, I suppose I could have tried to fit it in between CHURNING BUTTER and GROWING MY OWN COTTON FOR PETTICOATS, but life is short.

Plus, when you make your own gingerbread, I bet you don’t get that subtle taste of…let’s see…sodium benzoate. And you completely miss out on FD&C Yellow #5.

Also, mixing up a batch of homemade icing in the KitchenAid would have deprived Aura of the chance to…let me take another look at the instructions…ah, yes. She wouldn’t have been able to Knead Icing Fervently Until Proper Consistency. That fervent kneading got me three full minutes of laundry folding. I am throwing my full support behind fervent kneading of all sorts. I’m suddenly very equal-opportunity on the fervent kneading.

Of course, the Littlest Pet Shop pets had to watch. As they do most things in this house. Say, when you’re stepping buck-naked out of the shower. Or perhaps when you are waking up from a relaxing night’s sleep to OHMYGOD THAT DIM-LOOKING BUNNY WITH THE WEIRD FLOPPY EARS AND INAPPROPRIATE BOWTIE IS ONE INCH FROM MY FACE.

Even with the voyeurism, I’d say the gingerbread house was a success. Granted, it did highlight the fact that someone around here is in desperate need of a good old-fashioned anatomy lesson (starting with pointers on how most faces have two eyes), but for $9.99, it makes a pretty good table centerpiece.

Or it would, if someone would stop eating bits of the centerpiece. I tell you, it’s as if my agonized wails of “NOT THE RED #6 ADDITIVE CHIMNEY DECORATION!” simply fall on deaf ears.

So, question for you: How quickly do these suckers go to mold? Because I’m starting to have serious doubts about that door knocker.

Unfortunately, Adam planned ahead this year, buying two ducks (because one unwanted duck is never quite enough)  from some Web site where people deranged enough to buy Thanksgiving ducks buy their Thanksgiving ducks. The birds arrived Wednesday afternoon and I knew things were only going from bad to worse when I saw the wrappers, which read “Fresh Young Duckling.”

Why? Why did it have to be described that way, all lovely and youthful and reminiscent of those little darling fuzzballs I see every spring by the pond down the street? I mean, you go with “Fresh Young Duckling” and you might as well be planning to cook up a

or perhaps a

It didn’t help matters that Aura kept parading around the house asking if she could “eat the beak,” then, when told these ducks would be, er, bill-less, she switched to demands for “THE LEGS.”  This is what happens when you allow your husband to drag your small child to every Korean and Japanese market under the sun, where she learns to cagily size up live octopuses and extremely fresh and…exotic cuts of pork. Granted, I knew she was bordering on bloodthirsty when she ate the eye of a fried red snapper at a Mexican place last year (SO CRISPY CAN I HAVE THE OTHER ONE TOO WHAT’S WRONG MOMMY YOU LOOK WEIRD) but still. The beak?

The clincher: Adam overtrimmed the neck of one of the ducks. So not only did I have to force down duck on that most trytophan-sacred of all holidays, I had to force down duck that looked for all the world like it was embarking on a really big poop.

All this has taught me that we’re having Chinese food for Christmas. Vegetarian Chinese food. I sure am thankful for Chinese food.

I’m not sure when Halloween became the Holiday Second Only to Christmas, but honestly, it seemed a bit out of control this year. If it wasn’t the Main Street trick-or-treat, it was the dance class where you had to dress in costume, or the Halloween-themed birthday party, or the class decorate-a-pumpkin afterschool event, or the family carve-a-pumpkin event, or the HEY! BET YOU WANT ANOTHER PUMPKIN! THAT MAKES THREE TRILLION PUMPKINS IN ONE HOUSE WHEEEEE event.

I give it three years, maybe four, before we’re all trimming the Spooky Tree while humming along to Halloween carols. And no, “Monster Mash” doesn’t count. I know this because my child made me listen to it 1,452,999 times.

(Note: It was a graveyard smash.)

(Also: It caught on in a flash.)

(Also also: This is what having a child who voluntarily and downright eagerly chooses 3 Musketeers over Snickers does to a person. I have started drafting a whitepaper tentatively titled “Good Taste In Candy and How It Freakin’ Skips a Generation.” Look for it as a download on The Atlantic soon.)

I am nothing but grateful that the next holiday is simply Thanksgiving. Besides the wonderful, wonderful fact that this day focuses entirely on me eating, there is very little pressure to participate. Even this suburb to which I am chained by an overmortgaged house can’t make me decorate for Thanksgiving. What can you even do? Put up a turkey poster? That’s just weird. It’s not like we slap cardboard hams on the windows for Easter.

(I totally foresee a cardboard ham in my future. It will be so IRONIC.)

Of course, there will be all those handprint turkeys to deal with, and every parent knows that the handprint turkey and its proliferating ways are a thing of dread. There’s just so…many of them. It’s like they take over, one feathered handprint taped to the window, another all-construction-paper bird lurking in the school cubby. Little by little they infiltrate, one oddly shaped thumb-head at a time. They can only be disposed of in the dark of night, stealthily and well past bedtime, lest a young but blaring voice announce, “HEY WHERE’S MY HANDPRINT TURKEY THAT WAS STUCK TO THE KITCHEN CABINET, RIGHT NEXT TO MY HANDPRINT TURKEY THAT WAS STUCK TO THE KITCHEN COUNTER TELL ME HEEELP”

I’m telling you, when aliens finally come to annihilate us and sift through our detritus of a civilization, the sheer number of handprint turkeys in the landfills will stop them in their slimy, greenish tracks. Those or the comments on YouTube. One or the other.

[I hear that you can actually buy the stuff year-round, but I choose to ignore this and maybe doubt it a little. I could look down the candy aisle, say, in March, but I need to hold onto what illusions I have. Between the fact that Santa is imaginary (Hannukah Harry, too, of whose existence Adam briefly convinced me for a now semi-legendary month in our early courtship) and recently attained knowledge that the guy from that horrible show White Collar is actually gay (ALL THE GOOD ONES ARE), I need to believe that candy corn can be found only one month of the year. Also, it’s calorie-free and the chewing is good for your metabolism. True story. In Kate World.]

However, candy corn is more than just candy corn. It’s actually one member of that wonderful trifecta known as

To this end, let us briefly examine the trinity. Pay homage, if you will.

Member #1: The Candy Corn

Stats: Tri-colored

Relationship to other Autumn Mix members: Pivotal; assumes alpha dog role so sorely needed when the mellowcreme starts to feel its oats (see below)

Little-known fact: Melts poorly in cookies, if “melt” means “chemicals inside become really, really visible;” see The Baking Incident of 2000 of Which We Will Not Speak, or: Hey! The Oven’s on Fire!

Member #2: The Indian Corn

Stats: Dual-banded; mimics Member #1 except for bottom stripe

Relationship to other Autumn Mix members: Complementary; the, uh, “chocolate” band introduces additional flavor dimension (Flavor Dimension™)

Little-known fact: Debatably politically incorrect name actually refers to subcontinent Indians, not Native Americans; suckers are HUGE in Bangalore

Member #3: The Mellowcreme Pumpkin

Stats: Unconvincing replica of pumpkin; one bite equals exactly 1,974 tablespoons of sugar

Relationship to other Autumn Mix members: The fun one; seems harmless, yet ingestion of more than five causes severe sugar shock and maybe in a few cases, not sure which, can’t remember, gastrointestinal distress

Little-known fact: NO MORE MELLOWCREME NEVER AGAIN NO ONE SHOULD BE THIS BLOATED SEND HELP

Oh, super. I have to pause this post already because, for the first time in my increasingly longer life, it just hit me what a wildly asinine saying that is. No one wants a kid who marches to the beat of his/her own drum. I mean, just imagine it. There you are, up in the stands, watching your child in the school marching band and, yep, there she goes, just banging those drumsticks all over the damn place, because THAT’S THE BEAT OF HER DRUM. No matter that the, er, trumpets are now totally off and the, um, flutes sound off-key, and hell, the majorettes (they still exist? yes? not only in my old Sweet Valley High books?) now find that their batons are being thrown off tempo and maybe bonking the star quarterback who probably deserved it anyway because he cheated on Elizabeth with her identical twin Jessica but he THOUGHT it was Elizabeth and probably Sweet Valley High should be burned to the ground.

(And, yes, before you kindly recommend it, I read that. Or at least half. Maybe a quarter OH HEY LOOK IT’S SAUL BELLOW JOHN CHEEVER EUDORA WELTY LOOOOOK)

Anyhow, let’s just say that I enjoy the fact that Aura has her own way of approaching life, one that doesn’t always align with what I find myself expecting. She likes sparkly shoes and collecting rocks and tap dancing and eating sardines and making up her own songs.

She’s this:

And she’s this:

And God help me, despite gentle suggestions that perhaps she’d consider a cupcake? or a witch? or (at her father’s rather frantic request) a flower?, this Halloween she will be this:

Maybe it’s all those glazed crullers I insisting on having when I was pregnant. Yes, that’s got to be it.

That being said, I can’t help but acknowledge that Aura may have a point. At absolutely no other time of the year would I encourage her to sit with a strange man in costume who is attempting to lure her with candy, but there I stand, wheedling festively: “Go, ahead, honey! Can’t you see that he is waving that CANDY CANE at you and PATTING HIS LAP? He can’t wait to talk to you!”

Yet, one minute later, when Aura has fled into J.Crew, having given up on throwing herself over the edge and now intent on getting good and hidden, I scream, “Aura Layne! Get back here this instant! Do you want some STRANGER to come close and steal you? DO YOU?!?”

I believe this is what they call “sending mixed messages” in some circles. Some barren, childless circles.

Good old Adam, he of the Jewish upbringing and therefore a rather Grinchy outlook on Christmas, claims to not understand the Santa thing at all. He’s gotten better about it since Aura was born, but he’s still kind of mouthy on the subject at times, what with all the pontificating on FICTIONAL CHARACTER BENT ON CONSUMERISM and JEWS WOULD NEVER BE DUPED LIKE YOU GOYS.

I let him go on like this for a while every year. Then I remind him that I’ve tried gefilte fish. I know duped when I taste it.