Alex understands why we are so unbelievably annoyed with him right now, but he doesn't regret what he did, and he's not exactly repentant about it. His take, seemingly, is that in this case it was better to ask forgiveness than permission; he knew that not only would we say no to even the idea of a tattoo, but that getting one isn't exactly legal at his age. He also was well aware that he could pull off acting older long enough to get it, but he didn't consider the consequences of his actions, so far as the artist was concerned.

If we decided to make a huge issue of it, we could have the guy shut down. If we sued, we would likely win. None of that is on our agenda; Ian dragged Alex down there at noon today to get the tattoo artist's side of the story, and the guy was, Ian says, completely horrified, embarrassed, apologetic, and contrite at what had happened. He never once blamed Alex and accepted it all himself; there's nothing that can be done, though, because whether we like it or not, Alex has a nice red cross embedded in his skin for the rest of his life. He did pull his records to see if Alex had written down an ID number, and he did: his school ID card number. At least he did not try to pass off a fake ID, something we were minutely concerned about.

Even though there's nothing we can do about the actual tattoo short of expensive laser removal that would likely leave a scar (which we won't do; let him live with it, good or bad. There will be reactions from other important adults in his life soon enough) we can't just let this slide by. Alex is a wonderful kid, he's usually mature and thinks things through, but in some things he tends to view himself as an adult and with it comes a sense of entitlement he hasn't yet earned. That bothers both Ian and I, but more than that, we're bothered by the complete disregard for a rule he was very well aware of, and the decption employed to get the tattoo and keep it from us.

My father's house has been badly in need of interior painting since he bought it, but he's never had the time, and the idea of doing it all was a bit overwhelming. He has also wanted to pull up all the carpet and lay down wood floors; for the next couple of weeks, while Alex is on Christmas break, he now has a set of much younger muscles to do all the grunt work. It was the only reasonable thing we could think of; just grounding him wouldn't have an impact, and we're hoping that if he spends what he had hoped was going to be a carefree three weeks working harder than he ever has, he'll understand just how much this bothers us.

The only problem with it is that he's also liable to enjoy the work and the time spent with my dad (and his own; it looks like Ian is going to help since my Dad wants to move a wall.) It may not be the work he does for his grandfather as much as getting to his other obligations that will drive the point home; he still has to help Rachel and Kevin with their TKD (he promised, and this does not absolve him of that) and because he is not technically grounded, he has to find time to pay some attention to his girlfriend, and he has responsibilities in his own home.

If, in the end, he thinks it was all worth it, we'll embrace the tattoo. But he's going to have to suffer for it for a while; those adult decisions he thinks he's entitled to have adult consequences.

He will get Christmas Eve and Christmas day off. We're awful, horrible parents, but we're not mean.

Alex is intelligent. This isn't simple parental bias: Alex's intelligence is quantifiable and has propelled him to do things sooner than other kids his age. He spoke early, he walked early, he potty-trained very early. He was encouraged to skip grades from second grade onward, but resisted until junior high. He understand things I cannot begin to comprehend, and he has the ability to speak about those things on a level that astounds adults who share his intelligence, and he can translate most of those things into simple English that the rest of us can understand.

We take Alex's intelligence for granted; the boy is smart, he understands logic and rules, and even if he disagrees with those rules, for the most part he doesn't give us a hard time about them

So I am having a particularly difficult time understanding how someone whose intelligence has been described as "scary smart" can so something so utterly, profoundly stupid, and then believe that he could hide it from his parents for the rest of his teen years.

Alex, fourteen year old Alex, got a tattoo.

While I have serious issues with the artist who did this, I have bigger issues with my son. I know (and Alex knows) that he doesn't look fourteen; he can easily pass for seventeen, and if he hasn't shaved, he looks older.

Two weeks ago on Friday he was running late and didn't shave before school; I got a call from the office to bring him a razor, but it was already after lunch and I politely declined. One afternoon of stubble was not going to bring the school to its knees. Saturday morning he didn't bother shaving; he had plans to go shopping with a couple of friends, and his girlfriend thinks it's cute when he has stubble.

By Saturday afternoon, he obviously felt like he could pass for old enough.

Today, two weeks later, I walked into the bathroom after he had showered and found a container of Tattoo Goo on the counter. It did not register at first; after all, Char and I both have ink and have used it. It didn't occur to me for nearly an hour that that last time either of us needed tattoo ointment was last May.

My fury erupted with my realization; I'm not proud of it, but I totally lost my shit over this. I've never spanked any of the kids, I've never thought of hitting them; I don't grab, shove, push or pull them. But this afternoon I barged into my oldest son's room and pulled him off his bed by the front of his shirt and told him to take it off, or I would.

On the back of his left shoulder is a nearly healed red cross. If he were eighteen, I'd have absolutely no issues with this, but he's only fourteen. He knows better than this and he had to know how I would react.

His response to why?

You'd just say no.

No shit, Sherlock.

I have no idea what we'll do from here, other than making him cancel his date for tonight. Yes, I'll be having an up close and personal discussion with the person who did the tattoo, but there lies less blame there than with Alex.

Really, how in the hell did he think he could hide it for the next four years?

The dance school Kevin attends had their Winter Recital last night; it was not holiday themed, but rather a simple chance for each of the students to present something to their families. Kevin was not expecting to perform in it, given teh short amount of time he's been taking lessons there, but he learned that every student was expected to do something, either in a group or solo.

Since he migrated from ballet to performance dance, he was caught in the middle; the students he joined had already planned out what they were doing, and the ballet students he'd been with could have included him, but it would have been obvious that he'd been an add on. He didn't want to perform solo, so three older students volunteered to dance with him, as long as he came up with a concept, the music, and a basic idea of how the choreography would go. Where he could not think of more advanced dance routines, they would help.

Kevin is a bt of a ham, and he had his TKD to fall back on; adding to his excitement was that these older students (two girls and a 13 year old boy) had been dancing from 4-6 years old and had real skills. He wanted to incorporate some of the jumping skills from TKD into the dance, and they would have no issues doing them.

Watching him perform last night only confirmed for us that he made the right decision to back off TKD and explore dance. He created a dance number that had costumes that looked like they were fron "Cats" and they performed to the Stray Cats "Stray Cat Strut." It was funny and colorful, and Kevin held his own with the older students; I honestly don't think anyone who didn't know him would guess that he's a raw beginner in this school.

Over Christmas break he and Alex and Rachel plan on spending a significant chunk of time training for their upcoming black belt tests, but after the test Kevin wants to take a break from it and concentrate on dance as well as drums, and he's expressed an interest in voice lessons.

How could I possibly say no? The kid has real talent and deserves to see how deep he wants to get into it. The TKD he did for me; he loves it and loved doing it, but in the beginning it was because I required it of my kids. It has to be his turn now.

When Alex and Rachel were still practically babies, Char and I decided to head off potential child-oriented holiday greed by limiting how many gifts they would receive from us. We explained to them each year that the baby Jesus received gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh, so we would give each of them three gifts. Because it was all they knew, they accepted it without challenge.

Granted, Santa always brought a couple of presents, and there was no curbing the grandparents, but there was also no petitioning the grandparents for specific things. The lesson we hoped to drill home with them was gratitude for what you get and graciousness if it frankly sucked.

Living out in the sticks helped. By the time the kids were back in school after Christmas break (nothing PC here; they're in a parochial school, and it's definitely Chistmas break) and with such an extended break from friends there wasn't a lot of comparing holiday loot.

This year, the kids and their friends are talking. The concensus from their friends seemed to be that our kids are royally ripped off; the concensus with our kids is that their friends are somewhat spoiled and have expectations that are unrealistically high.

This is a good thing, I think, as long as they keep a condescending attitude out of it. They're all old enough to understand our logic (and we have explained why we settled on what we did) and they're all old enough to get as big a thrill out of giving as they are getting.

And now that they all understand Santa, they also understand we were never as rigid in the three gifts rule as they supposed. Still, they are not expecting anything more than three gifts each this year, but "if Santa wants to fill our stockings, that's cool."

The traditions we started 14 years ago have begun to fade already; Santa aside, even more than last year the kids are missing my dad right now. They don't miss his gift-giving generosity; they miss what little shit he could be. My dad never gave them gifts outright; he gave them hints and sent them on a wild hunt around the house--sometimes two houses--to find what he was giving them. They miss his nearly-evil laughter and how much fun he had tormenting them.

Truth be told, I miss it, too.

I wasn't done learning from him.

Even so, as much as we miss him, we're all looking forward to this Christmas. The house is going to be overflowing with family, and it hasn't escaped any of us that this year had the potential to be worse than last; the kids are determined to celebrate the fact that their mother is still here, and that she's now about 85% healed up.

While I will miss my dad's manical laughter, he would kick my ass if I didn't embrace this Christmas as something special.

Now if only my wife would give me a farking hint what she wants this year. Besides me.

Once we moved into the new dojang space, parents began asking about the resumption of Saturday classes. There are too many things going on after school during the week right now with school holiday concerts and programs, and Christmas shopping, that many of them wanted to be able to shift one of their kids weekday classes to Saturday. We had over 35 requests, so today we scheduled two classes: a beginner/intermediate class at 10 a.m. and an advanced class at 11:30.

Two students showed up for the beginner class; Damien (who is actually working hard on personal accountability and responsibility, perhaps because his parents confiscated his car keys and license until he gets his shit together) and a new adult student (who was obviously terrified at the lack of other students to hide behind and the possibility of so much one on one attention.)

In the advanced class: Alex, Rachel, Kevin, and a brand new brown belt who was over the top excited about the amount of instruction he was going to get. Alex worked with Kevin and Rachel, helping them hone the forms they need to test for black belt, and I focused on Ram... that's his nickname, obviously; he earned it in the first few weeks of training that involved contact, when his primary self defense technique was to ram his head into the stomach of his attacker. He's small for his age (he and Kevin are close in age and physical size) and he just went with what he thought would work. The other kids started calling him Ram--which to him was a badge of honor--and it stuck.

Initially, I was annoyed at the turnout this morning. So many parents begged for us to have classes on Saturdays, at least through the holidays, yet they couldn't be bothered to show up. My annoyance was tempered by the reminder from my better half that we would have been at the dojang either way, since the kids wanted to work on their forms; we have black belt testing slated for the middle of January, and Kevin and Rachel have made it their goal to be ready by then. Alex is eligible to test for his 2nd degree but isn't sure he'll be ready by then (he will be; he's harder on himself than anyone else could be) but he's working on it to keep his options open.

In the end, it was nice to have the time to focus on just those few students; there's a lot to be said for small class sizes. It was good for Damien to be in a class alone with an adult female student; he worked over time on how he spoke to her (I lost count of the number of times "ma'am" came out of his mouth) and he was eager to help her learn her form. It also gave me a better idea of how to work with him: most of the time that kid is full of shit and tries too hard to be the big guy, but without anyone else around he's friendly and helpful, and I was amazed at the respect he knows how to display. That gives me something to tap into.

Ram is a fun kid to teach. He soaks everything up like a sponge, and the sweat equity he's putting in on learning is just fun for him. He doesn't complain about the fifth set of pushups or the burn of lunges; he just does them so that he can get to the real class. He loves learning new forms and accepts critique so well that it doesn't feel like teaching.

All in all, it's a shame we can't give that kind of individual attention to each and every student.

We've only been in the new dojang for a couple of weeks, but we're already looking at having to cancel half the classes through the end of the year. This is Tk's school now, but TK took his ex up on an invitation to spend three weeks with his kids. Yes, he would be an idiot to pass it up, but it would have been nice to have this information before we moved and altered the class schedule, and I changed my life to revolve around my own kids' activities and not the dojang's.

Char can't take up TK's slack; Alex can teach a few of the beginner classes, but I still have to be there. Fortunately, Char is driving now and can get Kevin to dance classes and can take Stephanie home when her dad gets off work.

That in itself should be interesting: Stephanie and Damien in the same dojang.

If I sound irritated at all, it's because there's a part of me that thinks TK isn't coming back. Or if he does, he'll be bringing the ex back with him, and frankly, I have no kind words for her yet; she was Char's best friend, but I doubt Char would even look at her twice.

Yes, getting way ahead of ourselves here. It's what I do.

Akex figured out the whole Santa thing when he was three years old. Rather than relate the whole tale, I would direct you to something Thump wrote several years ago (and thanks for digging up the link for me, Thumps.) He was very good about never spoiling the whole thing for Rachel, and later Kevin, but on a parental plane, not having that with him was something we later realized we missed.

Now Kevin has admitted that he's figured it out, too, but he won't spoil it for Toni and Travis--and he now understands why Alex saves money fanatically all through the year, only to spend it all in one giant shopping trip after which he comes home empty handed.

He wants to go with Alex this year; he's got exactly $16.45 in his piggy bank, but he wants to spend it all on a toy and then donate the it (Dad will sneak him a little extra cash, but he won't know that until we get to the store.) Alex's only reservation in Kevin tagging alog was whether or not it would bother me: this is something he and I have done together for the last 11 years and he wasn't sure if I would resent it if he brought Kevin into it.

Hardly. I hate shopping but I am looking forward to this. Once established that I didn't mind this shopping trip not being just Alex and I they invited Rachel, too, but she declined, understanding, I think, that I might want to have something with just my boys.

She would be correct; still, I would also like to find something that's just for her and me (that doesn't involve shirtless werewolves and sparkling vampires) but she's a hard read sometimes. She's sweet and genuine, but she's also close to turning 13 and is smack in the middle of everything that brings with it.

I'll figure it out.

I guess the point really is that my kids get it, and they got it without much input from me. I'm not sure how I could be any prouder of them for how generous they inherently are.