MARK MY WORD: CHRISTMAS IS GONE, BUT THE TOYS REMAIN

Moms and dads should come with batteries. That way we would have enough energy to keep up with our children.

Elves would love our home. Toys are everywhere -- nestled beneath the Christmas tree, on top of the kitchen table and sprawled from one end of the house to the other.

It's that time of the year that parents dread -- the after-Christmas plague of toys.

The toys previously had been confined to neatly gift-wrapped boxes.

But once out of the box, they quickly spread throughout the home like windswept wrapping paper. They simply resist confinement.

Joni and I will spend the next year picking up all those wonderful toys. Just about the time we get the house cleaned up, Christmas will roll around again.

When it comes to children's toys, virtually everything takes batteries.

I wish I had stock in Eveready. Joni and I purchased enough batteries this Christmas to power the company into the 21st century.

Batteries power the Cabbage Patch doll that chews her plastic food and deposits it in her backpack. Batteries are required for the Kitchen Littles refrigerator that plunks out plastic ice cubes and the stove that makes a sizzling, frying sound, and all the other toys that our daughters Becca and Bailey received this Christmas.

Becca received a toy cash register that scans a toy credit card. Even children know that the credit card is better than cash. After all, they've seen mom and dad use the card, especially at Christmas time.

Among other things, Bailey got a Tickle Me Elmo doll.

Fortunately, we managed to buy one at regular price rather than the highly inflated prices demanded by toy scalpers.

As a result, we could afford to buy all those batteries to energize Elmo and all those other dolls Santa left us.

I'm convinced that children come with batteries too. But unlike toys, they don't have an on-off switch.

Moms and dads should come with batteries. That way we would have enough energy to keep up with our children as they scamper about in post-Christmas toy land.

But Christmas isn't just a time for toys.

As all parents know, children get sick during Christmas or any other holiday for that matter.

I'm convinced holidays were invented by the health care industry as national days of sickness.

One-year-old Bailey celebrated Christmas with flu-like symptoms, including a stuffy nose and a high fever.

She and Santa had one thing in common Christmas Eve, neither got any sleep.

On Christmas Day, Joni joined countless other parents with sick children in the let's-enjoy-Christmas-and-get-some-sleep trip to the pharmacy to pick up medicine.

Fortunately, the medicine didn't take batteries. With all those toys to power, we didn't have any left.

Within two days, Bailey was feeling remarkably better.

As the new year approaches, I'm beginning to wonder if we should just ignore New Year's Eve.

Maybe if we don't think about the approaching holiday, the flu bug will just pass us by.

Then, we really could get a charge out of New Year's Day, provided the batteries hold out.

~Mark Bliss is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.