We have no New Year’s traditions. None. Unless you count putting the kids to bed early and listening to the neighbor set off firecrackers out in the street.

Every year I think maybe we ought to do something or other as a family to mark the occasion, but… we don’t. I don’t think it’s such a kid-friendly holiday, this New Year’s Eve thing. Plus, what do my kids care about the new year, when their heads are still full of Christmas? Or maybe I just haven’t figured out how to make it relevant to them yet.

I’m still thinking on that. But for this year: jammies and books and seven o’clock bedtimes don’t sound too bad.

I am told that it’s time to upgrade my blogging software again. Seriously? Can it really be time for this fun again? Already?

And here I thought my excitement quota was already filled, what with the holidays and all.

Sigh.

I’m thinking a lot about this article, in which Ann Patchett explains her plan for writing: do it. Make it a priority. Every day. And then see if you can turn it into a habit by doing it for 32 days in a row.

Sounds like a good plan, and not only for writing.

What do you want to spend more time on in 2010? There are so many things I want to do more of, every day: sewing, reading to and with the kids, cooking, baking, taking pictures of and with the kids, being outside in nature (or at least in suburban cultivated faux-nature), also with the kids. More art. More embroidery. Maybe learn to do something with yarn. There aren’t enough hours in the day, or week, or month for everything I need to do plus everything I want to do.

But right now feels like a good time to think about it, and to define priorities, and to imagine a brilliant system wherein at least some of the things get done. And then if I can just stick with my system for 32 days…

Yes, in fact, we ended up decorating the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve. But we got dressed up first, which sort of made it seem like we had planned the whole thing, rather than that we just ran out of time. (Again: where the heck did December go?)

And now we’re enjoying a quiet week between Christmas and New Year’s, reading, playing games, reading some more, drinking lots of freshly-brewed tea, and reading. One of us is also furtively eating a box of See’s chocolates. (That would be me.)

Today’s book choices included Weekend Sewing and The Little Stranger for me, The Financial Lives of the Poets for Dane, The Mysterious Benedict Society & the Perilous Journey for Abigail, Fly Guy for Owen, Swish! for Audrey, The Pout-Pout Fish for Sadie, and Kenny and the Dragon for a read-aloud. Among others.

But the books piled on every available surface of my house got me thinking about what we’ve read this year, and about what we’re going to read next year.

I’ve read a bunch of great memoirs this year (not all of which were published this year): Alice Eve Cohen’s What I Thought I Knew; Vicki Forman’s This Lovely Life; Elizabeth McCracken’s An Exact Replica of a Figment of my Imagination; Julie Metz’s Perfection; Ann Patchett’s Truth & Beauty.

And fiction: Kristina Riggle’s Real Life and Liars; Alan Bradley’s The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (Amazon says the next book in the series will be out in March! squee!); The Help, of course, and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, and, and… the list goes on. And on. Until we have no bookshelf space left and have to shelve the novels two rows deep.

Not that that stops me from asking: what should I be reading next? What books did you love this year? Did you get books over the holiday? Give books? Still wishing for something in particular? (I still want to read Hope Edelman’s The Possibility of Everything, and Jamie Ford’s Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet. Oh! And Amanda Blake Soule’s Handmade Home.)

Hope your week is chilly and perfect for curling up with a blanket and a hot beverage. And a good book. Of course.

Gratuitous lollipop shot. Because I can.

Merry Christmas,* from Owen and the rest of us.

*Unless you’re not a Christmas person, in which case: have a very nice Friday and following weekend.

I had forgotten the fun of toddlers at Christmas! Specifically, in this case, I had forgotten the fun of listening to toddlers sing Christmas carols.

“We wish you a Merry Christmas,” Sadie has been singing, over and over again, “And a Happy ‘Oh, Dear.’ ”

A happy “oh, dear,” indeed. That may be an excellent description of my very own self.

May your oh, dears be few this week, and your happinesses be many.

ME to DANE: Would you get me a box of tissue? Or is it rude of me to ask that since you’re sitting down? I mean, I’m sitting down too, and you’re closer to the tissue, but you’re sitting on the floor, which is harder to get up from, and I’m sitting on the couch, which is easier to get up from, but I have a laptop and you don’t, even though you’re wrapping presents?

DANE: Yes.

[Staring contest ensues.]

DANE: I’ll get it, I just wondered if you remembered what the original question was after all that.

In fact, I did not.

But I suggest that it’s too much to ask that I remember the form of my original question when I’m already feeling slightly crummy and need tissue and have spent all my energy listing all possible tissue-getting factors.

Who’s with me?

(Okay, who can even follow what I’m saying? I swear I haven’t had any cold medicine, unless you count supplemental garlic and vitamin C and beta-glucan-whatever-it’s-called. It’s just the cold itself making me loopy. I’ll make sense another day.)

There are now three-ish days left until Christmas, and I (we) have not:

-    Decorated the Christmas tree.
-    Hung the stockings.
-    Unpacked the breakable nativity set. (The kids’ wooden one is out.)
-    Wrapped any presents.
-    Finished shopping. I keep thinking I’m done and then realizing I’m not. Apparently thinking of a gift is not the same as actually buying a gift.
-    Baked gingerbread, gingerbread cookies, cutout cookies, those almond cookies that come out of the cookie press…or, um, any kind of cookies. No seasonal baking whatsoever. None. Not any.

I’m considering telling my kids that our family does all that stuff—well, the decorating; nevermind the baking—on Christmas Eve. Would that count as a clever sanity-preserving tactic (giving myself permission not to have done it yet), or just as lying? Do you think?

Alright, alright, I won’t invent fake family traditions. But we may end up decorating on Christmas Eve regardless, the way things have been going around here.

Where did December go, anyway?

Last week after Sunday School, Abigail mentioned that she wanted to bring Christmas gifts to her classmates this week. Something small. Gum, maybe, or candy canes. I was totally cool with this plan. We had a whole week to locate a dozen treats and slap Christmas labels on them. No problem.

And then Dane went and did his scheduled week-out-of-town thing last week, and—oh, did I mention?—we had houseguests to keep us company while he was gone, and… I forgot all about it.

Until Saturday evening, when we were setting out the kids’ church clothes.

At which point I was not the only one to remember.

We ever-so-quickly rustled up (read: bought at Trader Joe’s) a selection of tiny chocolate bars, tossed them in holiday-themed plastic baggies, and attached “Merry Christmas” tags. About halfway through the stuffing process, I thought to read the labels on the chocolates: milk chocolate, yum; milk chocolate with almonds, also yum; dark chocolate, sounds good; dark chocolate with espresso beans, waitjustaminute-these-are-nine-year-olds-not-nineteen-year-olds!

We started over.

At that point Owen asked, ever so sweetly, if we couldn’t maybe just bring lollipops for his classmates. Just one lollipop for each of them. We wouldn’t have to wrap them in baggies—it would be so easy!

I could have said no, of course, but I didn’t really want to. I love doing these kind of projects, but—cough, like birthday parties, cough—I also love that we only have to do them once a year. I think that kind of sums up my project MO: I will do it as long as it’s fun and occasional and no one’s making me.

And so.

We procured a selection of lollipops and tied tags onto them. Technically I sent Owen to bed and tied the tags on myself.

This is what they looked like packed up before church this morning:

And this is what they looked like after church:

He decided not to give them out after all. The teachers happened to hand out dumdums in class, and he didn’t want anybody to have too many lollipops at once.

You know? I can—and  I mean this both ironically and truly—appreciate that sentiment.

Things I am wondering about this week:

What’s the proper etiquette for Christmas light lighting? You turn them on at dusk, right, or somewhere thereabouts, and then you turn them off… when, exactly? Ten o’clock? Midnight? Whenever you go to bed? Is it a community-standards thing, where you need to do more or less the same thing as your neighbors? And if you put up more lights, does that mean you can turn them off earlier to offset the cost of electricity?

Dane has been out of town all week, and my mind, apparently, has begun to fixate on bizarre topics. These two facts may or may not be related.

Last night the kids and I were IMing with Dane before bedtime. It works like this: the kids all pile onto my bed, and then they take turns giving me messages to transcribe. “Write this,” said Owen. “Write: I love you goodnight Alfred.”

“Alfred?” I asked.

“Oops,” said he. “I meant Daddy.”

Obviously.