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.

My latest column for Capital Parent Newspaper is up on their blog today – on unbreakable traditions. Check it out!

Here’s a story that I heard from my friend Laura, about her grandmother.

Laura’s grandmother lived in rural Newfoundland in the ’30s, on a farm.

Once, while pregnant, she went outside to chop wood with an axe. She was swinging the axe when she accidentally sliced off a good chuck of one of her calves, filleting it like a fish for dinner.

So she did what (naturally) any woman would do, she picked up the hunk of flesh from the ground, slapped it back on her leg, tied it on with a handkerchief, and resumed chopping wood. When she had finished chopping the wood, she gathered it all up and hauled it back to the house, with her leg still tied up and dripping blood.

Eventually a doctor was called, and it turned out that she had slapped the chunk of leg back on upside down, but it was too late to peel it off and turn it around, because healing had begun. So it stayed like that for the rest of her life.

Now that’s badass.

——————————————–

The day before yesterday, I was returning some tools to the workroom that the Captain had borrowed for his Scouts meeting. It was just a few little things so I left the door open and didn’t turn the light on, figuring I could feel my way to the two drawers I needed.

We’d been hanging some artwork on the weekend and one of the little hanger things, a golden metal clasp with jagged teeth, was lying on the floor, and I didn’t see it. I stepped on it and it jabbed right through my sock and deep into the heel of my foot.

I did what (naturally) any woman would do, which was start crying, and scream for my husband, who ran downstairs thinking I’d broken a bone. He yanked out the clasp and helped me upstairs where we removed the sock to see a small puncture wound oozing a bit of blood. He brought me a band aid.

I limped around the house for the next two days.

This whole incident has me feeling that Laura’s grandmother would be pretty disappointed in me. I feel I need to up my badassery just a wee bit.

The other day, Gal Smiley was looking at a placemat we have of all the Prime Ministers because she has to pick one for a school project.

(What, your house doesn’t have placemats with all the Prime Ministers on them?)

The Captain’s favourite Prime Minister is the lesser-known Sir John Abbott, because they share the same birthday.

(What, your kids don’t have a favourite Prime Minister?)

Lately the Captain has taken to referring to Abbott lovingly as “A Butt” because he’s 11 and that’s hilarious.

So they had this conversation:

Gal Smiley: I have to pick a Prime Minister for my project.

Me: That placemat is older and the current Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, isn’t on there.

The Captain: Are you going to do A Butt? [snickers]

Gal Smiley: No, I’m thinking of doing the current Prime Minister.

The Captain: How do you know I wasn’t referring to the current Prime Minister?

Me: Ha ha ha ha ha! AWESOME.

(What, your kids don’t make jokes about current Canadian politics?)