Seriously, I can NEVER get enough of these…

I’ve gone and done it.

For the first time in at least ten years, I didn’t send out Christmas cards.

You see, I waited much too long to take a picture of the kids. I kept telling myself that we could wait one more week. What was one more week? But then things kept happening, and finally the weekend that was to be my final deadline came and went with all of us being sick and barely able to function, much less posing and smiling for a picture.

I can’t think of a worse recipe for a photo than two sick kids, one of them a toddler who has hit the terrible twos with a vengeance.

So I didn’t upload the picture, the card never got printed, I never had to go pick them up, and I didn’t have to spend a bunch of time addressing them.

I feel sort of bad about it, because I know many people look forward to having a picture of the kids.

But then again, I sort of don’t.

Maybe I could send out New Year’s cards?

53% of you have the baking gene, while 21% of you do not.  The other 25% give it their best shot.  I would say that I am a fairly good baker, but that I don’t seem to find the time to be able to do it as often as I would like.  Which with my toddler is like, never.  I have sworn, though, that I will bake some cookies for my son this year for the holidays.

Today I’m all about the holidays. Again.

So we have a family that we are good friends with, who happens to have a son the same age as ours.  They are good friends, too.

The boy is an only child, and actually has four sets of grandparents, so he is definitely not lacking in the Christmas gift department.  And truly, like my son, he pretty much has everything he needs.  His parents have more than once told me they are of the mind that he has more stuff than he could ever possibly use. And if he did want something, it would probably be too expensive for me to buy it for him on my own.

I called his mom last week, and told her I had an idea.  I wanted to run it by her, and to make sure that she wasn’t thinking I was trying to wriggle out of gift-giving.

Instead of buying him yet more things he didn’t really need, I told his mom that I was thinking of taking the two of them out on a special outing, such as to an amusement park or a really fun place they don’t normally get to go.  He wouldn’t be getting a gift, per se, but getting what I would like to refer to as a “treat.”

His parents both enthusiastically agreed, and although it was of course my idea, I felt bad for a nanosecond that I wouldn’t be giving him an actual gift on Christmas.

What say you?

Good idea, or does it just look like I’m trying to get out of getting him a present?

Because truly, I’m not.

Hello my dears, apologies for my absence last week.  Things got a little confusing for a bit, and then sickness hit both myself and my husband at the same time.

The overwhelming consensus was that the leopard-print polyester shirt intended for teens was a big bunch of fugly, with 53% disapproving.  Another 26% felt that it was criminal to charge that much for something that looks like a bargain-bin find at the Salvation Army.  Only a small 9% total felt it was fine, or could possibly look cute on someone less than 14 years old.

As the big holidays creep ever nearer, I want to know what you do in the kitchen.

To all of my lovely friends at Teeny Manolo!

54% of you have been stood up by a repair person once or twice and 36% say more times than you deem to be proper. I’m sorry, but that is WAY too many. Only a blessed 9% minority have never had it happen.

Today I’m all about Thanksgiving.

54% of you have no pity for the uncaring parent of a toddler who is having a public meltdown.  Which, let’s admit, is pretty much going to happen at least once if your toddler ever leaves the house.  36% can totally walk a mile in the suffering parent’s shoes, 6% try to ignore it, and 3% say shut up already. I recently thought about how I react, and usually I’m pretty sympathetic.  Probably moreso now that I’ve got one of my own right now that is quite a few notches up on the “difficult” scale.

But, let’s talk about Halloween!  To me, it is always a big bummer when Halloween falls on a school night.  Not that it’s a big deal for us this year, but for many other people, it puts a bit of a kibosh on the festivities.  It seems at least one lawmaker agrees with me, and earlier this year introduced a bill (in his state, that is) to have Halloween celebrated on the last Saturday in October, no matter the date.