My latest column for Capital Parent is up on their site – and it’s about how much I hate being cold. TIMELY.

I don’t feel any obligation to make New Year’s resolutions, but it is a good time to just kind of take a good look at the way things are going and think about anything you might want to get done that isn’t already getting done. So sometimes I make a resolution, and I usually keep it (unless it involves exercise/weight loss, which is a pie crust promise, easily made, easily broken), but sometimes I don’t.

This year I don’t so much have a specific resolution as a general plan to get my writing goals in order, and make stuff happen. That means figuring out what I want to do, and then doing it. It sounds so simple, doesn’t it? SIGH.

So in addition to my regular writing gigs, and the website design business which is still chugging along, and DEAR LORD, my vow to paint this house and hang up some artwork if it KILLS ME (which it might), I would also like to:

• take some writing classes
• enter some writing contests
• finish a large creative writing project I have been working on
• gather my blog posts and columns from the past two years into a Blurb book (a softball goal, as I’m 90% done this already)

It seems kind of silly to me to actually write this stuff down, and I can’t explain why I actually feel kind of embarrassed to have writerly goals or to hold myself out as a “writer,” like, you can’t be a real writer unless someone else says you are. But I think if I don’t actually put it down in this blog I just won’t do it, so I’m creating my own accountability here.

Also, I’ve seen people do this – pick a “word of the year” and it never spoke to me before, but this year I do have a word to live by, and it’s this:

Make it so.

Well, hello there! You take a break from the blog for a couple of weeks, and they go and start a whole new year on you. Happy 2015!

I had lots of ideas for blogging over the holidays, but it just seemed so much easier to roll over on the couch, grab yet another cookie, and then continue reading Bossypants on my Kindle. Needless to say, it was a good break. But now, I will capture as many of those vitally-important social commentary notes as I can remember through the butter-and-sugar-filled haze, as I have been reading a few non-fiction family histories lately and suddenly it seems key that I record every single thing we did. Future generations will want to know!

Christmas Eve Shopping. About 15 years ago, when I was a young newlywed, my husband and I were packing up to visit the folks on Christmas Eve, and I decided I needed some slippers to take with me. So we went to the mall, and it took us an hour to get into the parking lot and find a spot, 15 minutes to buy slippers, then an hour and a half to exit the parking lot. Thus began my ban on shopping in December.

This year, however, we found ourselves in a similar last minute situation when the zipper on the Little Miss’ coat showed signs of failure, and we were just about to leave for a week’s worth of visits to Southern Ontario. So on December 24 we went out early and managed to score her a new coat at the MEC for half price, and it was surprisingly quiet and civilized. So we dared to brave the mall – Gal Smiley had lost her hat – and were in and out of the Sports Experts in less than half an hour total. Amazing.

Later that day I was driving past the Chapters and after the success of the morning, thought I’d pop in to pick up the Captain the next book in the series he is reading, for the trip, and it was a MADHOUSE. I can understand people having to run out to pick up just one or two last things on Christmas Eve, but I am amazed, AMAZED, at the people in there who had armfuls and armfuls of stuff. Who were spending like, $200 or more. Isn’t that like, ALL their shopping? On the very last possible day? How do these people SURVIVE without lists and planning? It just doesn’t seem possible.

Anyway, we managed to get the book but I can’t say my views on December 24 shopping have been reformed.

Christmas Eve Movies. We went to the movies on the afternoon of December 24 and it was delightful – not too crowded and a nice way to while away the afternoon. Often we do a museum or something but everyone was a little sick, so this was all we could handle. The boys went to see The Hobbit (mini-review: Sir Monkeypants feels it was OVERPADDED and UNNECESSARY and should have STUCK TO THE BOOK, it is his own personal Little Mermaid, which often elicits a rant from me about how EVERYONE IS SUPPOSED TO DIE AT THE END, STUPID DISNEY); I took the girls to see Annie (mini-review: absolutely delightful first 3/4, totally blown ending, GAH).

Anyway, this may become a new tradition.

Christmas Travel. For possibly the first time ever, no one got really sick while we were away – a few sniffly noses, a dry cough on the Little Miss, that was it. A CHRISTMAS MIRACLE.

Despite this, however, both Sir Monkeypants and I sheepishly admitted to each other on the drive home that we are both kind of tired of travelling for the holidays. We definitely want to see the people. It definitely will not feel like Christmas if we don’t see the people. And frankly, I’m not sure how I would ever live with the crushing guilt of not seeing the people. But having to pack up everything on Christmas Day, then drive on Boxing Day, and sleep in strange beds, arriving home tired with most of the break gone – getting old. Adding to the ennui is the fact that we repeat this same trip for every single March Break, Thanksgiving, and half of Sir Monkeypants’ summer vacation, leaving only one week each year for us to vacation without visiting family. HMMMMM. Not that we have any immediate plans to change things, but the thought of possibly, one day, changing the system, is there.

Do you visit your families in a sleepover/travel kind of way at Christmas? Every year? What’s your plan? I’m curious.

New Year’s Eve. Every year for New Year’s we make it a point to be home, and have cheese fondue (shout out to my friend Erica, who started me on the cheese fondue tradition back in high school, and whose family recipe I still use today). The Captain is milk-allergic, however, so this year we added a broth fondue at the other end of the table (shout out to my friend RheostaticsFan, who introduced us to the whole broth fondue concept earlier this year). It was awesome, and then later that night we had a chocolate fondue too, and it was awesome, and lo, a new tradition is born.

Funny story: Gal Smiley played “Auld Lang Syne” for her Christmas piano recital this year, which led to a discussion of New Year’s Eve, and all three of my children were shocked, SHOCKED, to find out that some people stay up until midnight to welcome in the new year. Like, they had NO idea this was a thing, it was not even on their radar as a holiday of any kind.

So of course this year, they all swore they’d stay up for it, but we were mean parents and put them to bed later-than-usual but still within-sanity-limits. After the little one was in bed, I watched Guardians of the Galaxy with the older two (mini-review: Oh boy did I LAUGH AND LAUGH, thought it was the perfect fluffy fun. Recommended!).

Puzzles. While at my mom’s house, I got out a 500 piece puzzle I found downstairs, and it was so fabulous – a kitty puzzle shaped like a kitty, containing several individual pieces shaped like kitties! Behold:

Photo courtesy of Gal Smiley.

The whole extended family worked on it together and it took all day, and was a major accomplishment. It reminded me how much I like to do puzzles. Resolved: do more puzzles in 2015.

And that brings us to this new year, full of hope and promise and renewed energy. I have so much to say about my plans – BIG PLANS – for 2015, but that’s for another day. In the meantime, stay warm – it’s way nippy out there – and hope your return to the routine was a little less painful than mine (JESUS, 6 a.m. comes EARLY, especially when you’re all out of cookies).

So far this week, I have made:

Two dozen chocolate chip cookies and three dozen mini cupcakes for the Girl Guide Christmas party;

Peppermint bark and Nicole’s Vegan Fudge for the Brownies Christmas party;

More peppermint bark and more fudge for the Christmas Piano Recital;

Two dozen chocolate chip cookies for one kid’s school Christmas party;

Two dozen shortbread cookies for another kid’s school Christmas party;

14 dozen more cookies – coconut, snickerdoodles, crackles, chocolate chip, shortbread with cherries, shortbread without cherries, soft molasses – for the mixed cookie boxes we take to all the houses and relatives we visit over the holidays

Still to come: sugar cookie shapes, dough currently chilling in the fridge.

I list this all out not to show you how totally awesome Martha Stewart I am, but rather to show you how COMPLETELY STUPID I am.

I was having coffee with some of the other School Moms on Tuesday and we were talking about how we KNOW we should do less at Christmas, how everyone tells us to just sit down already with a cup of tea, how unimportant it all is, and yet we cannot stop ourselves. Why is that?

I hear a lot of talk about the pressure to create the perfect Christmas, but I don’t think that’s it, at least not for me. I do a lot of baking so that my kids always have safe treats to eat when we’re at an event or someone else’s house, but I do not believe they really need 10 different kinds of cookie to choose from. I send Christmas cards but I think the vast majority of my list would be just as happy with an email. I decorate the house but my husband would be just as happy with paper snowflakes taped to the walls and a wreath on the door.

Here’s the real problem: I love it.

I love the baking, I love the many kinds of cookies, I love the cherries and the coconut and the chocolate. I love the way my nephews get excited to see what’s in the cookie box we brought, and delight in trying each kind (that kind of praise is like crack cocaine to the under-appreciated stay-at-home mom, trust me). I love the way the mantle looks with greenery on it, I love the way our family newsletter comes together as a perfect little snapshot of our year. I love Christmas carols and Christmas movies and Christmas specials and I want to play them ALL, at least once, every single year.

I suppose the pressure to create a perfect Christmas, then, is the pressure to create the perfect Christmas for ME. To feel like I have done everything I would want to do for a perfect Christmas, every single year. To feel like life could not possibly BE any more Christmassy.

And on the plus side, it doesn’t quite feel like too much yet, it doesn’t quite add up to more than I can handle – yet – but it’s riiiight on the very edge. I’m tired (did I mention also sick?) and more than anything this Christmas, I need to give myself permission to sit the heck down with a cup of tea. I need to believe that Christmas isn’t about the cookies, or the cards, or the shopping, even though all that stuff makes me really happy.

I need to just take a moment to breathe it all in. Christmas is about peace, too – remember that, Lynn.

So Amy left a comment on Friday’s post about the Tiny Potato Who Believes You Can Do The Thing, that she wanted to make a poster out of it. And I thought, BRILLIANT, I will do exactly that for my children! So I went to Google and searched for “tiny potato” images, and the very first hit was this:

Taken from cerealz on imgur.

More searching revealed there is a whole Tiny Potato meme, as well as further sayings and art – you can see the whole collection here on We ♥ It.

None of these seem to be the original creators, though. Tiny Potato – still a mystery, but now a much, much bigger mystery.

Edited to add:

There’s more! Apparently the potato version is a modification to the original picture, which made the rounds about 8 months ago as a tiny cactus:

Taken from HotMeme.net, but I believe the original was posted to Reddit on their “Daily Inspiration” board.

The potato version seems to have been made as a take-off by potato-obsessed Emily of Emily’s Diary – see her Tumblr for all kinds of potato art.

Sherlock Holmes would be SO PROUD of me. Elementary, my dear Watson!

The other day, the Captain arrived at his classroom at school in the morning to find this written on the board:

Have a Cherry Merry Christmas…

Which is obviously going to be the greeting inside all my holiday cards next year.

And then underneath that was this:

I am a tiny potato and I believe you can do the thing.

Needless to say, it caused a sensation in the classroom and created an instant Phrase of Legend. Now, whenever someone is having a hard day or struggling to open a jar of pickles or can’t figure out how to find Masterchef Junior on the PVR, we bust out with, “I am a tiny potato and I believe you can do the thing.” Funny voices a plus. You can do the thing! You can do it!

In other news, our advent activities are going well and I think I can say that we’re all having a good time with it, which is a welcome surprise. On Monday we broke out all the old Thomas the Tank Engine stuff to build a track around the Christmas tree. The Captain in particular has gotten really nostalgic about Thomas this past year and was super into this activity, singlehandedly engineering the layout and design, and then spending hours that night and on every day since playing trains. The girls joined in, and I have to say, if the sight of your three kids playing with wooden trains at the base of the Christmas tree isn’t enough to get you into the holiday spirit, I don’t know what is.

Brainwave! Next year I should drop some of the less popular activities (i.e. the crafts, we seem to have craft-adverse kids around here) and instead just name some old toy, and make it a “play with that toy” day. We could have a Fisher Price Little People night, a Playmobil night, a Hot Wheels night. I think it would fly and be a lot of fun.

Last night we played Pin the Nose on the Snowman – I printed off a giant Olaf and some noses and the kids, to my surprise, enthusiastically took part. There were secret prizes involved, so I guess that was a motivating factor – the prizes were picture books, and they were a HUGE hit. Each kid got a book for participating, and there was one extra book for the winner.

Gal Smiley had spotted this one – Dojo Daycare by Chris Tougas – in the Chapters flyer and desperately wanted it, and I thought it was too cute to pass up. So I got that one for her, and it’s sweet and adorable and charming and she loves it.

For the Little Miss, I chose I Want My Hat Back by Jon Klassen, because she loves bears, brown bears in particular. And it is AWESOME – soooooo funny in a subtle and almost twisted way. I would highly recommend giving picture books to your older kids, and this one book is the reason why – they totally get the subversive humour in it. I don’t think I’ve laughed this hard in a while – and we have read this one about 20 times since last night, so yes, WIN.

The Captain got a copy of More Pies by Robert Munsch, because he has an obsession with pie and I have NO idea where he could have gotten such a thing. Absolutely did not disappoint – Munsch is always good but this one in particular is a) hilarious and b) chock full of pie, and we all loved it.

The winner of the nose pinning was Gal Smiley, and she got the bonus book – Sam and Dave Dig a Hole by Mac Barnett. The pictures in this book are drawn by Jon Klassen of I Want My Hat Back fame, and they are just as hilarious and subtle and AWESOME as that book, and we have read and giggled over this one about 20 times so far as well.

So to sum up: we’re all feeling very cherry merry over here. You can do the thing!

We’re doing the usual Advent Activity Calendar, and I haven’t said too much about it because a) I’ve listed all possible activities before here, and not too much is new, and b) we are barely managing to keep the thing going, especially on weekdays.

Lately we have been hanging around the school yard to play after school, so we don’t get home until much later than usual. Then there’s snacking, and homework (soooo muuuuuch hoooomework, Grade 5 is killing us), and piano practice, and by then we’re lucky if we have 15 minutes or so do the advent activity before I have to start making dinner, so whoever has Scouts/Guides/Brownies can get there on time.

The Little Miss has been pretty faithful about doing her thing but the older two have kind of a take-it-or-leave-it attitude, especially on the days when they have an activity on or a lot of homework, and that is okay with me. I think I will still do it in the years to come, but I will be looking for very small/short things to do on the weekdays in particular – things like “here kid, have a cookie” or “here kid, watch this Christmas special.”

For this year, though, here’s what we’ve done so far:
1 – Donate a toy at Toy Mountain (moved to WalMart locations this year – we used to do this at Bayshore so we could see Santa too. Now I’m not sure when we will do the Santa thing…if at all. SNIFF.)
2 – Make cards for your grandparents (a task not welcomed by anyone this year – dropping it next year, sorry Ba and Nanny! Maybe we will just SHOP for cards instead.)
3 – Hide and Seek with Santa and Rudolph, where I hide two stuffies around the house and the kids have to find them – still surprisingly popular.
4 – Read Christmas books with Mommy – semi popular – the girls liked it, while the Captain read selections from our massive Christmas picture book collection on his own.
5 – Make chocolate dipped marshmallows – the girls and I made them. Everyone ate them happily!
6 – Fill the Bus – The kids help me shop for food at the Superstore, then we drop it at the bus – I like this event because it’s more concrete to them than just donating money via the computer.

Still to come:
7 – Go to a 67s game (with FameThrowa and Mr. Chatty, who make every event a special event!)
8 – Build a train track around the tree
9 – Ice cream sundae night
10 – make peppermint bark
11 – pin the nose on the snowman for a prize (everyone is getting a new book)
12 – Family Games Night
13 – Alight at Night (or, this year we are thinking of just going downtown to see the Lights Across Canada, which actually we have never done before)
14 – skiing at Mount Packenham
15 – Teddy Bear Picnic (basically: eat dinner on the floor with stuffies around – super popular with the girls)
16 – Jammies Dance Party
17 – Make paper snowflakes (making a return after spectacular fails in the past – fingers crossed it works this time!)
18 – Wrap a present for your brother or sister
19 – go for a drive to see Christmas lights
20 – Family swim
21 – Movie Matinee – Annie or Night at the Museum or Penguins of Madagascar
22 – Watch A Christmas Story (and possibly make a gingerbread house, if I can find the energy for it)
23 – Museum of Nature
24 – Fancy dress up dinner (they count on this one every year – Gal Smiley even bought a new vest this year in anticipation!)
25 – Tell us your favourite thing about Christmas!

Next year: more napping, I think. The kids would love that, wouldn’t they?

The kids got some progress reports a few weeks ago – progress reports, which just indicate whether or not they are “progressing well,” no actual marks, which will instead appear on the report cards that arrive in March and June. They did fine, they were fine, I had my usual rant about the horror of report cards, yadda yadda yadda.

Today my youngest brought home this handy brochure from the board about how to interpret progress and report cards. I got really excited because I have been saying for years that the board needs to do this, because reading a report card is like reading an ancient text originally written in a foreign language, then translated using Google Translate into Latin, then translated a second time into English – you can recognise some of the words, but actually making cognitive sense is a bit of a leap.

And then of course, the disappointment when I read the brochure (a full 8 1/2 x 11 size, glossy, 18 pages) and found it covers a lot of stuff, but not the most annoying and bittermaking part, which is the incomprehensible gibberish that is the comments.

UGH, THE COMMENTS.

Not a word at all about how to interpret them, so I will say this here – after years, YEARS of trying to understand Ontario report cards, here is the key:

It’s all about the adverbs.

There will be, on your kids’ report card, sentences like this: “John sometimes adds two-digit numbers without using his fingers.” And that sounds great, doesn’t it? He sometimes does this hard thing! Maybe he’s even advanced, ahead of his class!

But no, the key word here is “sometimes.” Sometimes means, not all the time. “Often” is better. “Usually” is even better, and “Always” is your gold standard.

So everyone gets the same comment, but it’s the ADVERB that tells you how he is actually doing, relative to the class and the criteria the teacher is using.

You have to comb through every sentence to figure out a) what is the criteria being talked about here, and b) how my kid did at it. That’s IF you can figure it out at all – and there’s no information at all on how your kid could have done better, what they could have done differently, or what kind of things we should be working on at home. Should we drill him now in two digit adding? Should we do worksheets? Or is he doing just fine, just won’t be a research mathematician someday? Should we panic? Should we leave it in the hands of the school?

WHAT EXACTLY ARE YOU TRYING TO SAY?

I understand that teacher’s hands are somewhat tied, and they have to choose canned comments like this (legal reasons? Maybe?). I also know that report cards are a HUGE amount of work, and the easier we can make them on our poor overworked teachers, the better.

But seriously, there has GOT to be a better way to make these things more readable and more legible. I guess many parents, confronted with a “C” in math, want to know why. But more than saying, “here is what we studied, and your kid only did it some of the time,” what I want to know is:

* how does my kid learn?
* what strategies in the classroom work better for him, than others?
* what subject areas excited him and made him want to learn, rather than others he found dull and a hard slog?
* what are some things we could do at home to help?

So rather than the canned comments, I’d like to read something like “John seems to do well with simple math but has problems with oral word problems. He works best in a quiet environment. He could use some review on two digit adding at home.”

Would that be so hard? I suppose this is what the parent-teacher interviews are for. But in that case, I’d almost rather have a blank report card – just the marks – and then have it all explained to me in person. Either that, or the OCDSB better publish a whole textbook, explaining how to translate comments into meaningful information.

BROCHURE FAIL.

Majic 100, the easy listening radio station here in town – which I find myself more and more drawn to – went to an all Christmas music format over two weeks ago. It seems early, but actually no time is too early for Christmas music, if you ask me.

I usually have a very, very narrow definition of music I like: jangly acoustic guitar rock with a slight folk sound, male lead singer, and clever/punnish lyrics. But throw the word “Christmas” into the title somewhere, and I become a musical strumpet, suddenly grooving along in my car to country/pop/cheese/rap/whatever. It’s all good when it’s Christmasy!

Although I’m happy enough to listen to whatever Majic coughs up during its 24 hour Christmas music cycle, I also have a full pack of Christmas CDs in the van – it has a six disc changer, which let me tell you, was Cutting Edge back in 2006, but now seems oddly quaint, like I should just give up and get an iPod already. But until I embrace the iTechnology, I’m happy to live with my full deck of CDs in the car, so I thought I’d take a moment here to recommend my personal favourites (links not sponsored or anything, because LAZY).

It’s a Hi-5 Christmas by children’s act Hi-5. Noooooot for everyone. This CD throws out the cheesiest of synth pop combined with some pretty basic singing and it’s all cheery, cheery, cheery in a kids’ TV show kind of way. But it’s also the first Christmas CD that comes out ever year, because we will never get enough of such original hits as Santa Wear Your Shorts, Five Days ‘Til Christmas, and Groovy Christmas. There’s even a track where The Night Before Christmas has been set to music, and it ROCKS. If you’re the type who delights in unironically wearing a green knit sweater with a huge reindeer in a jingle bell hat on it each year for the holidays, then this CD is for you.

Christmas Portrait and An Old Fashioned Christmas by The Carpenters. Here I further reveal why I’m being drawn to the easy listening station by admitting that I unabashedly LOVE The Carpenters. These two Christmas albums are masterpieces of arrangement, seamlessly blending carol after carol with a full choir, instrumentals, and Karen Carpenter’s angel like voice. It’s a real testament to the skill of arranger Richard Carpenter – every single Christmas song you know and love is in here somewhere, along with new favourites (personal faves: Christmas Waltz, Sleigh Ride, and my all-time favourite, their version of Home for the Holidays). Super secret fun fact: I always fantasized, as a teen, of turning these two albums into a figure skating Christmas special, complete with casting for each and every song. GEEK.

The Edge Of Christmas, a compilation of various alterna-rock acts from the 80s and 90s, so basically right in my wheelhouse. This CD is out of print so it’ll cost you an arm and a leg to get it, but maybe have a peek at the track listing and see how many you can just buy standalone on iTunes. Must-haves: Christmas Wrapping by The Waitresses, Merry Christmas (I Don’t Want To Fight) by The Ramones, Fairytale of New York by The Pogues, 2000 Miles by The Pretenders (which, no matter how many times it is covered, will NEVER be as good as when Chrissy Hynde is singing it, she is THE BOMB).

Christmas by Michael Buble – just got this one last year. Blueblay, as he is known in our house, is someone I would never listen to at other times of the year. But at Christmas, his version of “All I Want For Christmas Is You” makes me want to have a VERY happy holiday, if you know what I mean.

 

Maybe This Christmas, another alterna-rock Christmas album that was created solely to feature the song “Maybe This Christmas” by Ron Sexsmith, which indeed is probably the greatest Christmas song ever written. Other tracks – including Winter Wonderland by Phantom Planet, 12/23/95 by Jimmy Eat World (apparently very rare), and Jack Johnson’s brilliant, best-ever spin on Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer, make this a must-listen every Christmas season. Word of warning though: this disc also contains the song “Bizarre Christmas Incident” by Ben Folds Five which is crass, gross, and totally depressing, and should be skipped. I actually burned a new copy of this CD with this one song removed just so I could listen in the car without having to get totally pissed at Ben Folds every time it came around. Ben Folds, you are HARSHING MY CHRISTMAS SPIRIT.

Nick at Nite’s A Classic Cartoon Christmas – which I bought at Mrs. Tiggy Winkles a few years ago after almost breaking my face, smiling to “Put One Foot In Front Of The Other” from the classic Rudolph special, which at the time I hadn’t heard in years. Also contains songs from The Grinch, the Muppets Christmas Special, the Charlie Brown Special, and Santa Claus is Coming to Town. It’s like my childhood encapsulated in on CD, and I force this one (repeatedly!) on the kids every year. Just noticed there was a second volume of this – hopefully it doesn’t cost a fortune because then I’ll have to break it to the kids that something mysterious happened to their university fund.

Glee Christmas Album – I’m hot and cold on this one, but I do so love their version of We Need a Little Christmas, as well as the all boy rock-out version of Jingle Bells. The kids really love it though – this is one of their favourites and the one Gal Smiley, in particular, asks for every year. I just searched Amazon and I see they are up to FOUR Glee Christmas albums now, way to milk that brand! (Of course I will shortly be buying them all.)

Missing from my collection: Bing Crosby (I actually have one of his CDs, but the sound quality is so bad I hardly ever listen to it), Boney M (saw their Christmas CD at WalMart last week and have been dreaming of “Mary’s Boy Child” ever since – my parents must have listened to that album a thousand times when I was young), and Mariah Carey. Oh, and Idina Menzel has a new Christmas CD this year, too. So much Christmas music, so little time – especially because Sir Monkeypants has a strict “only between Lynn’s birthday (Nov 18) and New Year’s Eve” Christmas music rule. I best get cracking!

What are your Christmas music favourites?

You would think that, over time, the favourite t-shirts would sift to the top of the pile, while the less-favoured shirts would settle down at the bottom of the pile, thus resulting in less of a need to rifle through the pile every day looking for the one t-shirt that you feel like wearing, thus creating less of a total disaster in the t-shirt drawer whenever one’s mother goes to put away your freshly washed favourite t-shirts.

You would think that, but you would apparently be wrong.