"Does Daddy know you're doing that?!"

Doug gave me my Christmas present early this year: a beautiful printer -- a right dandy one that prints and scans and copies. It's so far beyond the free printer we received when we bought our laptop that I was a bit overwhelmed.

And did I mention that it's wireless?

Wireless.

That word struck fear.

Of course, it was the week before Christmas, and there was mass chaos in our world. I was in the midst of creating our Christmas cards, we were in the middle of a snowstorm which meant a snow day for the girls, and Doug was swamped at work preparing to be on vacation for two weeks.

The morning after he gave me the present, it was obvious that it was up to ME to get the wireless printer up and running. As Doug left for work that morning, I begged; I pleaded; I tried to shame him into staying to get my *present* working.

As he left, he turned and issued a challenge, "It will be good for your brain."

Now, some folks might think that was an insult, but it was more of challenge. You see... there are moments where I question how much atrophying is going on in my brain. There are days where my biggest mental challenge is how to divide two blueberry bagels between three children.

So, I made my coffee, the girls invited over the neighbor friends to play, and I pulled out the user manual for the wireless printer.

I was feeling quite smug and confident as I breezed through steps 1-4. That was when my oldest appeared to get some drawing paper. She looked at me in disbelief and asked, "Does Daddy know you're doing that?!"

I have to admit that I was taken aback by her question.

I stammered about, telling her that I WROTE technical manuals for years.

YEARS.

That is, before I gave birth to a child who CLEARLY underestimated her mother's abilities.

She looked at me, her eyes open wide, "You did WHAT?"

That's when it occurred to me that she really didn't know. In all my justification that I was competent enough to set up a wireless printer, I had revealed more about my past than my daughter knew.

She sat down on the edge of the couch and asked a couple of questions.

Perhaps I went into way too much detail or maybe I was just trying to rebuild my own confidence, but I did drone on a bit. I do admit that.

Finally, she stood, a stack of drawing paper in hand and said, "Sorry, Mom... I hate to tell you this, but your job sounds like it was... kind of... boring." The last word, she delivered to the stack of papers -- as if this would somehow soften the blow.

I returned to the manual (God bless the technical writers at HP) and was all the way up to the last page of instructions. This was where it got dicey.

The WIRELESS part.

I was stymied. I was stuck.

That's when the second daughter made her appearance. I'm not sure if the first daughter had reported back or what the second daughter's intent was. She simply looked at me, her mouth open wide and asked, "What ARE you doing?"

I made a mistake at that point. I admitted that I was stuck, confused, lost, baffled. You name it.

The second daughter simply looked me in the eye and revealed, "You better wait for Daddy to fix it."

She sprinted from the room at top speed as I started in on my speech for the second time that morning, somehow justifying that I was qualified to set up a wireless printer by myself.

You see... in our house, Daddy is *the fixer*. He fixes it all -- the computer, the broken latch on the door, the zipper that goes offtrack, the drawer that refuses to close. I hear it every day: "Wait for Daddy to fix it."

Well, this time, I didn't wait for Daddy to fix it. I just plunged right in -- even though I was on the edge of tears and muttering a few choice words.

And guess what?

It worked.

It printed.

First a picture... and then a beautiful document.

The angels sang, and it was truly a Christmas miracle.

Mommy fixed it.