This week, the week before the Holidays Officially Blow Up, I’d like to focus on what ya’ll are saying here, in our little blogging home. Here we are all, gathered for the holidays at BlogHer, eating cookies prepared by the foodies and listening to the politicos kick each other back and forth across the environmentally safe carpeting.

Since this is your mommy & family section, I’ll take your hand and guide you over to our corner, the corner with the most peanut butter smears and dried canned vegetables stuck between the floorboards, the corner where we blink not at wiping someone’s butt for them on command. We prefer things loud here, so you can’t hear our kids screaming. Pass the spiked eggnog.

What I notice most as I look around mommy & family is emotion. Lots of emotion. Yea, though the wee ones do look angelic with their hands folded, blissfully waiting for Christmas/Hanukah/Kwanzaa to begin, they also scream, throw things and behave like wild boars quite often during the holidays, because they are so very excited.

From MommaMary:

If that scream gets any shriller, any louder, I'm worried that some nuclear missile in some silo somewhere out here in the Midwest is accidentally going to go off. Car alarms all over the city will ring out. If he can make that scream better, I'm doing what the dude at Faslane told me to do if the Nuke siren went off "Go to one of the buildings listed on this card and take cover... but what I really mean is pitch it and run."

Endure enough of the children screaming inexplicably while holding expensive toys, and you’ll find yourself all pissed off, like Maniacalmommy:

Heaven help my Scrooge-like soul. I am a lonely woman who hates to shop.

Why can't we just get one good thing and enjoy each other the rest of the time?

I have a lot of "things." I would enjoy some adult time that didn't involve my grandma or Tater's bus driver two days a week. Or something for my kids that didn't involve me spending an hour picking up all the pieces before I vacuum.

Somewhere in all of this, we mommies and daddies stand, hands on hips, ready to scream at the little angels, demonic as they’d turned fueled by sugar, late nights, colored lights and other kids. Ready to seize the pickle ornament from the tree and shatter it into itsy bitsy pieces with Grandma’s antique serving platter. Ready to run screaming into the snowy night. And it would feel good. But what about this bit of advice from Opalstorm?

How cool would it be is we could have challenges… do-overs and take-backs… in life?

Something happens that you think should have had a different outcome, and you can ask for a review of the event. If there’s a ruling that the event was totally unfair, you get a do-over. If the review shows you messed up and the whole thing was your fault, you have to live with the consequences, or worse.

As a kid, I would have used that flag like a missile. I would have been throwing it every time I turned around. As I got into high school and college, I did some really stupid stuff, but I knew what I was doing when I did it. I would have lost the overwhelming majority of any challenges.

As a wife and mother, I’m probably the reason for other flags to be flying. I would win a few, lose a few…

How much more careful would we be about our own actions, or less likely to set blame to someone else, if our life was reviewed by a set of field officials?

So, my dears, I'm not going to lecture you on faith and hope and love this holiday season. Those children, they're loud. Those Christmas decorations? Expensive and delicate, a bad combination for homes with preschoolers. Those family dinners? Destined to stir up decades-old jealousies or one-upsmanship. Those presents? Never right for anyone but Visa.

But at the end, if there were a review of the play, I think we'd all find that everyone tried and everyone failed to make life "perfect." Besides, we're in it together - it's the holidays, and we're all miserable. Ha!