A very Kelle Hampton Christmas

Do you all know who Kelle Hampton is? No? She's a blogger. She has a closet full of Anthropologie clothes, a perpetually sunny attitude and two adorable children. She's pretty much the best mom ever. She takes these pictures of her kids? Doing all these things that I plan to do with my kid but never seem to come to fruition. Sidewalk chalk. Smores. Picnics. I tried to have a picnic once but on the way there realized I had forgotten a blanket and went anyway and Lulu ate handfuls of mulch and a bug flew into my mouth. I believe the word FUCK was involved. Kelle Hampton never, ever uses the word FUCK. Ever.

And it's like, in Kelle Hampton's house, every day is a holiday. There are hand-lettered placecards with pinecones at run-of-the-mill Tuesday night dinners. So it follows that actual holidays are explosions of crafts and beauty and baking and sweetness and wonderfulness and spangly Christmas villages.

Have I ever mentioned that I love Christmas? My birthday is the day after Christmas. James's is three days after Christmas. It's a big deal in our house. I wait all year for Christmas. Last year, I was on bed rest and missed Christmas. I missed Christmas tree trimming and caroling and solstice parties and all the fun.

This year, y'all, I am making up for it. This year, I am having a Kelle Hampton Christmas. There will be baking. There will be crafting. There will probably be more FUCK but it will be in a joyful way, as in, deck the halls with boughs of holly, FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK, FUCK FUCK-FUCK FUCK!

It's going to happen.

___________

We began the Kelle Hampton Christmas Project (KHCP) this weekend with a trip to the U.S. Botanic Garden. It's apparently one of the most popular holiday destinations in DC. They have a huge holiday display every year, with seasonal plants and little Christmastime replicas of DC landmarks made out of palm fronds and bits of bark and stuff. We're kind of limited in the holiday activities we can do with the baby, as she is pre-verbal, pre-ambulatory and only vaguely conscious of where she is at any given moment, but plants! Replicas! You only need eyes, right?

Lu survived her first Metro ride into the city, and we arrived flush with that triumph and strolled past the late-blooming rose garden and it was beautiful. I even took a very Kelle Hamptonish picture.

See?

While we waited in line in the shadow of the Capitol, James and I had one of those conversations that smug new parents have when they are half-way through completing a difficult task with an infant. "We are such good parents." "I know, right?" "We can still do all the things we did before we were parents." "I know! It's so easy! People make things so much harder than they have to be."

We got inside and looked at a palm-frond Jefferson Memorial, a palm-frond Washington Monument. Beautiful. There were so many beautiful, Christmassy things to see.


There was also a shit-ton of people. People everywhere. With screaming hordes of children. At first it wasn't so bad. But as we wended our way deeper and deeper into the conservatory, there were more and more of them. Pressing in on either side. It was like a scene in a zombie movie, where you see one zombie and think, SHIT. Then all of a sudden you go over the crest of a hill and there are FIVE THOUSAND ZOMBIES and you know you're going to die.

Brains. Braaaaaaaaains.

When I set up this shot, I had a clear view of the poinsettia display beneath the tree. 1/80th of a second later, the crowd had belched eight people directly in front of me. It was hard to hear over the din. I rolled the wheel of my stroller over a kid's hand. He was on the floor, writhing, in front of the palm-frond Lincoln Memorial. Why was he on the floor? WHAT KIND OF LAWLESS LAND HAVE WE ENTERED?

And then Lulu's diaper leaked all over her pants and she started to wail.

Have YOU ever been to the U.S. Botanic Garden? If you have, you will know that the bathroom is all the hell way in the farthest recesses of the building. To get there, you have to go through an actual desert, rainforest and jungle, complete with misty fog-like atmosphere that wreaks havoc on freshly blowdried hair. We're lugging the stroller up the stairs, down the stairs, over little bridges past waterfalls and plants of the tundra and finally we get there and I go in to change Lu's diaper. Only I've forgotten an extra pair of pants. And the zippered bag that we put our soiled cloth diapers in. So I try to dry her pants with the hand dryer but it scares her, so I put her moist pants back on and tuck the diaper into a pocket of my bag and everything smells like pee.

I go back out and literally my six-foot-tall husband is being swept away on a tide of people who are swarming the bathrooms and the gift shop. If it had not been for the ammonia-stink of the pee diaper, I think I might have been crushed. As it was, the sea parted (in revulsion) enough for my to wedge my way over to my husband.

"We're getting the FUCK out of here," he shouts. And I mean, shouts. Like, we've been to eardrum-blasting punk rock shows where we have not had to shout so loud. And I can barely hear him.

So we fold up the stroller and link arms and fight our way back through the rainforest and jungle and desert toward the front entrance. Every few steps our way is blocked by a family with children spread out over the walkway, posing for family pictures. It is literally a hundred degrees and I am wearing a scarf and coat. There was one point in the Hawaii exhibit where I stumbled and called out to James, all nobly, "Go! Just go! Take the baby! Save yourself!" and he was all, "OK, dude, see you later. Maybe." And went.

It took me about twenty minutes to fight my way through the crowd and meet up with him in the vestibule. We took a quick snapshot with the Christmas tree (the largest indoor tree in DC! the website said) because precious memories and all that.

This was as close as we were able to get to it.

And then we fled. As we're leaving, a peppy blond asks us if we want to visit the train room, the line for which stretches around the building. James takes her by the shoulders and gives her a little shake. "STOP TALKING LIKE THAT! YOU'RE NOT MAKING ANY SENSE!" And she's like, HAHAHA this is my third year here, A SNAIL WALKING ON THE EDGE OF A STRAIGHT RAZOR. That's my dream. That's my nightmare.

We burst out into the clear, cold air and got as far away from that place as we could as fast as we could. By the time we had gone three blocks, the memory had started to fade, and we did that thing that smug new parents do when they have survived something incredibly difficult with a baby. "We are such good parents." "I know!" "We really managed that super-well." "I know, you've really got to be quick thinking in situations like that. Level-headed. It really wasn't so bad. People make things a lot harder than they have to be..."

I've got all month to get this Kelle Hampton thing right.

It's going to happen.