Once, a very, very long time ago, I was talking to a neighbor about scrapbooking. Journaling, in particular. She said that Christmas is the hardest thing to journal about, because it's the same every year. Same traditions, same meals and treats and trips to Grandma's house. I had to think for a few minutes about why I enjoy writing about the holidays, until I could put it into words: exactly becausethere are so many things the same about each year, I watch for the little things that are different, and this watching helps me write better journaling, but it has an added bonus. Watching for the unique moments helps me experience everything with a little bit more clarity.

This year was no different: the same Christmas-Eve pajamas, the same fudge and cookies and caramel, the same ornaments on the tree, the same opening-presents traditions. Still, these are the unique moments that will set Christmas 2009 apart from all the others:

• On Christmas Eve, after we got home from our party, Haley stayed up late with me. She helped me cook---the pound cake to take to my mom's, the dough for cinnamon rolls in the morning, the Christmas-morning casserole and, of course, the wassail. We talked and laughed and drank tasty beverages together. It was awesome!
• Nathan was SO excited this year about the whole Santa thing. (Maybe his last gasp of believing, which makes me sad.) He wrote the sweetest letter to Santa, apologizing for the mistakes he thought he'd made throughout the year and asking for a second chance. Then he listed all his wants, including the model numbers of each & every Nerf gun he hoped for. And the ones he already has. At the end, he wrote "PS, please write me back." So, on Christmas Eve (actually, it was early, early Christmas morning), I wrote him back. I have a handwriting I only use on the tags on the Santa gifts (because I clearly remember thinking, as a child, "Santa's handwriting is just like my mom's!"), and I used it for the letter. I wrote (on the back of his letter) about choices, and how learning to choose is a process, and about what "being good" really means, and then I tucked the letter into the little stocking he has that hangs on the tree. I think the time I spent writing that letter was my favorite moment.
• Jake was SO HARD to shop for this year. Every time I asked him what he wanted he'd say "I don't know, Mom. You choose. Or Santa can choose!" Possibly knowing The Santa Secret made him less enthusiastic. Thinking about this makes me sad. I wish the believing could last longer. Magic drains from our life far too early. Still, Kendell managed a brilliant idea for a gift, a Leatherman knife, and the fact that Jake didn't know he would love to have one made the magic come back, just for a second, when he opened it.
• Maybe my most annoying moment: When he opened his Christmas-Eve PJs (at our family Christmas party and thus surrounded by an enormous group of people), Kaleb threw them on the floor and said "This is stupid! I want toys!" and then I managed not to shake him or slap him or any of the other horrible desires I had welling up in me, but just pulled him aside and spoke to him very, very sternly about being grateful and non-bratty and loving everything he was given no matter what. Oh, and the old "if you can't say anything nice" concept. Maybe it worked, because every time he opened a gift on Christmas morning, he hugged me and said "Thanks, Momma, I love this!" and then he'd get confused and say "I mean, thanks Santa" while he looked up at the ceiling. Apparently Santa lives in the sky with the angels and the Savior.
• Kendell gave me a new watch. I've been wanting a pretty silver watch for a long time, but I have my nice gold one so the silver one was definitely more of a want than a need. I showed him one at Costco that I loved, hoping he'd come through, and he did! It was almost a surprise. I love it!
• Two days before Christmas, I was shopping at Target and came across these rolls of tinsel. I snapped up two and used all of it instead of ribbon on the Santa presents. I thought it added such a pretty glow to everything. I wonder: am I the only one who obsesses a little bit over how gifts look under the tree? I like the paper and ribbons and bows to match. I like the ribbons and bows to be shimmery and notable. I like the gift tags to coordinate with the wrapping. Yes, I probably AM the only one who gets obsessive about it. Still: I loved that tinsel ribbon. I almost wish I'd bought enough for next year, too, except then it might not be as special.

Stuff I learned (or relearned) this year:

• I should plan better. I was up until 4:00 in the morning on the 23rd/24th, and again until 4:00 on Christmas Eve. It's not like Christmas is a surprise. WHY do I procrastinate? My goal for next year is to wrap the presents when I buy them. Of course, the problem isn't just procrastination. It's also the fact that my kids get all curious if a door is shut, anywhere in the house. "What you doing in there, mom?" It is exhausting to get all the wrapping stuff in and out of secret hiding places!
• Speaking of secret hiding places, I had this epiphany: the empty boxes your Christmas decorations are no longer inhabiting are a great spot for hiding wrapped gifts.
• Buy gift bags at the post-Christmas sales and hide them away to use next year. For once, I didn't learn this the hard way! I would have been up even later on Christmas Eve had I not discovered the gift bags I bought last year at Joann for something ridiculous like .25 each. They saved my life!
• Speaking of gift bags. My sister-in-law, who is a goddess of knowing-how-to-do-everything-well, needed moi to teach her how to artfully arrange tissue in a gift bag. I thought I was the last person who learned this, but in case you are still in the dark, here is how to do it. 1. Unfold the tissue paper and smooth out any crinkles. 2. Pinch the paper in the middle (horizontal and vertical). 3. Shake it down and then back up and 4. voila! The paper is artfully fluffed.
• No one knows all the plans in your head, so if you don't manage to get them finished, no one will know. Plans I failed on: those blasted pajamas (whenever I was working on them, Jake would come in and say "hey, momma! How goes the Quest for Pants?"), an orange quilt for Nathan (also a birthday failure), a red quilt for Jake ("planned" in the sense that I thought "hmmmm, Jake is always cold in his room, and he sleeps with that ancient flannel quilt, I should make him something new" but I didn't even shop for it yet), a photo album with prints of all the photo shoots I've done with Haley.
• Speaking of taking pictures. Last year I learned I should use my big flash on Christmas morning. I did that, and am much happier with my pictures. I even took it to my mom's house, and then I forgot to take many pictures. I even missed our traditional family-photo-by-Grandma's-tree picture. I am totally bummed about that one! In general I took fewer photos this Christmas, but I like the ones I got.

Stuff to remember for next year:

• Haley really wants to be surprised. She also wants me to be able to pick out cute clothes that she loves. I need to work on understanding her fashion sense better so I can surprise her next year.
• I only need to buy ONE roll of wrapping paper for the old saint nick gifts. The majority of another roll is in the super-secret hiding place. (The one I will not divulge until all children no longer live at home, not even on my blog. It is SUCH a good hiding spot!)
• There is a sack of gift bags in the hiding spot.
• There is also an enormous roll of super-cute ribbon---shimmery and Christmasy---no one has seen. Not as cute as the tinsel ribbon, but that belongs just to 2009.
• Jake needs new blue-and-gold tissue paper for his PJ bag.

And one thing that makes me nuts:

• WHY do they put so many blue bows in the sacks of bows? I know there's that Elvis song, and my grandma used to have a blue tree, but seriously...there are more blue bows than any other color. Are there really THAT many people who have blue Christmases? Or is America full of wrapping-supply containers stuffed with shiny blue bows that no one will ever use?

this sums up how I'm feeling about everything I have left to do (Namely: baking and wrapping) :

(This photo uploaded on a dare.) 

Maybe it's even been left until the wee morning hours of December 24, and you neeeeeeed to have them sewn before Christmas Eve begins. Maybe you're not procrastinating your procrastination and you're getting them done, oh, two or maybe even three days before you need them. At any rate, say that you, like me, find yourself sewing flannel pajamas at 12:37 a.m. You're bleary eyed and would really rather be sleeping, but your perfectionist self (or maybe it's your "frugal" self, or your simply insane self) has set you the task: sew the pajamas!

So you're sewing pajamas well past midnight. And here they are, the tips you need for pajama success.

1. Preshrink the flannel. Trust me: unless your children enjoy wearing floods, or you enjoy seeing your children wear floods, preshrink the flannel. Hot water, hot dryer. Get all the shrinking out of the way! (An added bonus: the flannel will be even softer to work with.)
2. Because you are going to preshrink the flannel, buy at least 1/4 yard more fabric than the pattern says you need. If your frolicking penguins or your sweet little monkeys are directional, buy even more.
3. THE very best pajama pattern is the Simplicity one (2826) because it only has an inner thigh seam. I mean, think about it: say you have four children, and maybe you're completely off your rocker and you think each kid needs three pair of PJs. Not having an outer thigh seam has just saved you 24 long seams! ***
4. When you are cutting the pattern pieces out, remember: if the fabric isn't doubled, you have to turn the pattern piece upside down when you cut the second leg.
5. Speaking of cutting: 1, use the self-healing mat underneath your fabric and you'll be surprised at how much faster your scissors move; you can even use the rotary cutter for straight cuts   2, if your fabric is directional, and you have enough length to cut two pieces out at once (doubled fabric), cut the fabric in half, turn the bottom piece so the pattern is right side up, match them together (backs of fabric together), and then pin your pattern on. Voila: now none of the gamboling jungle animals gambol upside down; and 3 asking yourself 27 times just where it was you set your scissors down is a sign that you are tired. Proceed with caution! Scissors aren't just good at cutting fabric; they're pretty good at flesh, too.
6. It doesn't matter which pattern you buy: they all have this creepy-high waist line. Make a shorter rise by folding the pattern down upon itself by about one inch.
7. Before you start sewing, fill your bobbin. (Or maybe it's just me who gets annoyed at having to stop in the middle of a project to fill the bobbin?) If you are sewing 18 pair of PJs, you might need two bobbins. (You also might need a psychiatrist by the time you are finished, but that is another set of instructions altogether.) Also vacuum the feed dogs. Flannel makes a lot of lint.
8. Music while sewing is essential. Yeah, you have to turn it up a little bit louder to hear it over your machine, and dogs howl when you sing along, but if you've done this enough times your children already know how to sleep through the sewing/singing/music/howling-dog racket. Sure, you might wake the neighbors, but it won't be the last time.
9. When you're sewing the leg seams, don't cut the thread in between legs. Just feed the next piece in right after the first piece. (There is a name for this kind of sewing, but I am too tired to remember it. Tired and bleary-eyed and bloody-fingered.) It is surprising how much time that saves.
10. Speaking of time: pinning the seams is worth the time, especially when you get to the crotch seam.
11. Speaking of the crotch seam: the pattern will tell you to sew over the curved part two or three extra times, since that is a pressure point and tends to unravel easily. Instead, when you get to the curve, switch your machine so you're using the decorative stitch that looks like three lines of stitches sewn next to each other. (It's option #3 on my machine and I am making a large assumption that a---you know what I'm talking about and b---most machines have this stitch.) Way faster! Also: it is easier to sew this seam if you take the little drawer off the front of your machine, so it's only the width of the bobbin case you have to fight with on the curve.
12. Most patterns have you buy 1" wide elastic. 1 1/2" is better because it NEVER rolls or twists.
13. If you are wondering how to adjust the elastic waist while still keeping the pajamas a surprise, you have two options. 1: if your kid is young enough, try them on your little darling while he/she is sleeping. (Yay! A perk for midnight sewing: sleeping children!) 2: use a pair of the kids' jeans as a reference point to compare against. This also works for how big of a hem you put in.
14. Before you turn the PJs right side out, spray the bottom with a little spurt of spray adhesive. Voila: you've just skipped that pesky iron-one-quarter-inch step of hemming. (Do NOT do this with the waistband, though. It's hard to drag the elastic through the casing if it's all gummed up with spray adhesive. Not that *I* have any personal experience with that.)
15. Stringing elastic through the casing is a fabulous! way of getting your dear, sweet husband to help you in your midnight time of need. Really: there's nothing a sleepy husband likes to do more than help with sewing projects.
16. If you want a button on the front of the PJs (just for cuteness, not for, you know, actual buttoning; this also makes it a wee bit easier for the small ones to get their pajamas on by themselves without the dreaded Backward Pajama Phenomenon; you'll have been up late sewing and will be too tired to help the small ones with the pajama putting-on), handstitch it on before you put the elastic in. I'd say you could ask your husband to help you sew on buttons but, well...I know how THAT turns out.
17. Hem the PJs with LOTS of room to grow. Because as much as you love sewing, and freshly-laundered flannel, and anticipating the look on your child's face when he/she sees the results of all your labors (which will likely be a mix of "Yay, pajamas!" and "what can I open next that is NOT clothes?" luckily expressed only in body language as said child throws said PJs into the pile of other already-opened stuff), let's be honest: you won't be making more anytime soon.

***please note: this post is in no way attempting to convince you that I have, in fact, sewn 12 pair of pajamas at one sitting, specifically not tonight. I have, in truth, sewn 20 pair at one sitting, but that did not happen tonight. Due to the fact that my older children A---sleep in running shorts and a T or B---sleep in their skivvies or C---find ONE pair of PJs that is the. absolute. favorite and refuse to sleep in anything else, only my youngest will be receiving the made-by-mom pajamas. He is getting eight pair not because I am materialistic in the sense of spending extraneously, or even materialistic in the sense of I LOVE FABRIC (ooooh, someone should totally compliment me on that pun right there! Whew! I am GOOD!), but because the child is obsessed with pajamas. Seriously: if I would allow it, he would wear them 24/7. Preschool, church, swimming pool, whatev: any time is pajama time in Kaleb's head, and getting dressed in actual clothes is TORTURE. Now that I have managed to convince him that wearing clothes when we leave for the day is a necessity, I have stopped getting bugged about him wearing PJs at all other times. But when that is ALL he wants to wear, and he tends to freak out if he spills anything on his 'jammies and must put on a new pair at the least little drop or splash: yeah, he needs eight pair.

Santa's Workshop
~ William Stafford

The doll bodies glide past on little
wires that glide through their eyes.
They never meet—the boys and girls
turn a corner side by side and
enter a distant room to be boxed
separately. One at a time they are
released from the wires. Their eyes
rest. WIth folded arms they
take their place, lie down,
go out to save the world.

I have a half-written blog post saved and awaiting, well, a finish. And I have all these blog posts written in my head. Unfortunately they are staying in my head because hello: December? I cannot even get to the stuff I MUST get to, let alone the extraneous stuff like extracting blog entries from the crowded spaces in my brain.

Throw into the usual December stress (shopping, and money, and spending money while shopping; traffic and having to drive in it; all the customary family issues) one wedding (which really took up two entire days, and entire days are precious), one 11-year-old whose answer to "Jake, what do you want for Christmas?" is "I don't know, Mom, you decide," the same 11-year-old who suddenly desperately needs new shoes but whose father is genetically incapable of shopping for shoes the easy way but must compare prices and features and coolness factor, a husband who still can't really do much because of weight restrictions from that time his chest was ripped open, plus there's just the everyday chicken-without-head feel my life has even when it is not December, and yeah: I am sort of scatterbrained.

Not enough time for blogging.

Not enough time for almost anything. That's why this is my letter to Santa Claus:

Dear Santa:

OK, I probably haven't been very good this year. The best I can get to "good" is "good enough," and let's face it: even my "good enough" isn't anywhere close to good enough.

Can we just go with "it's the thought that counts"?

At any rate, if I have been good enough to warrant a gift, all I want for Christmas is two or three extra hours in a day. Just until I get caught up?

love, Amy

PS: thanks for doing all the magical stuff you do. No one tells you thank you enough!

What's in your letter to Santa?

My parents didn't set an awesome musical example for my sisters and me. Kenny Rogers, Roger Whittaker, Barbara Mandrell. Actually, when I stop to think about it, I'm not sure my mom cared about music at all. My dad did, though; he was a stereophile before they invented the term. At Christmas he'd play the Christmas records of all his favorites, and even then, even at eight or nine, I'd roll my eyes and yearn for something a little more cool. It's a miracle I didn't grow up to be a country-music fan (although two of my sisters did; I do still love them but have been known to gently tease them, too).

Thank goodness some of my favorite musicians have at least one Christmas song for me to track down.

I'll confess: I've bought an entire Christmas CD just to get one song by a musician I love. (Like the nearly-completely horrid Kevin & Bean KROQ CD I bought---used, at least---just so I could have Tori Amos singing "Little Drummer Boy" on my Christmas playlist.) Of course, downloadable MP3s have made this process easier. As has the fact that Sarah M. has a Christmas CD, and then there are the bits and pieces I've found on the Very Special Christmas anthologies, and there's the Barenaked Ladies CD, and I also love the Celtic Women (who don't really fit, but whatever: It's MY Christmas playlist!)

So when I discovered, completely by accident in Walmart, that Tori Amos has a Christmas CD, I purchased it without delay. Without even doing any sort of price comparison! It's been getting fairly heavy rotation since I bought it. I don't love every song on the CD (the song "Pink and Glitter" could not be more annoying to me; when Haley heard it---playing on the stereo in the kitchen---she said "what kind of a weird song is this?), but that's OK, because most of the songs are perfect. What draws me most to Tori Amos's music is her lyrics; she has a knack for an elegant metaphor, a skill at dropping obtuse references that makes me shiver a little bit (in a good way, as in, for example, "Don't Make Me Come to Vegas"---not, obviously, on the Christmas CD---which has this lyric: don't make me pull him out of your head/Athena will attest/that it could be done and yeah: happy shiver), and a way of stringing words together that makes me think we could be friends.

So I didn't really expect her Christmas CD to just be singing the same songs everyone else sings, and I was right. Most of the traditional carols she sings are reinterpreted. In "Star of Wonder," for example, the wisemen speak: "some say we have been in exile/What we need is solar fire." Or "Coventry Carol" (a carol I both love and detest, because it puts you right into the Herod's raging) which has a sort of pre-song introduction thing. What works with the songs is that they sound like a Christmas carol should sound. Except also with the Tori-Amos sound. The new songs (written by her) do, too. "Winter's Carol" is my favorite.

It is, like the rest of my Christmas music, happy making.

Just for fun, the rest of my listen-to-all-December list:

Wintersong by Sarah McLachlan (I love, love her version of "What Child is This?" and "River" and "First Noel" and...well, the entire CD)

Celtic Women (Especially The Carol of the Bells, which is my favorite carol ever)

Joy by Jewel (I think her version of "Joy to the World" is perfect)

and these individual, long-sought-for songs:
Winter Wonderland, Jason Mraz
New York Christmas, Rob Thomas
Little Drummer Boy, Tori Amos (NOT on the new CD...this was the hardest one to find, but worth it as it gives me chills)
Winter Wonderland, Eurythmics
The Coventry Carol, Allison Moyet (Again: chills, even more than the Tori version)
Christmas Day, Dido
I Saw Three Ships, Sting (although I wonder every time I sing along: didn't the writers of Olde English ballads know that Bethlehem is, ummm, landlocked?)
Children Go Where I Send Thee, Natalie Merchant
O Holy Night, Traci Chapman
Oi to the World, No Doubt (This is Kaleb's favorite Christmas song, which never fails to crack me up)
I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day, Sarah McLachlan (not on Wintersong)
God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, Barenaked Ladies & Sarah M.
The Night Before Christmas, Carly Simon
Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, The Pretenders

One of the perks of being a grown up is that I have forgiven my parents for their musical sins. Haley, I'm pretty certain, thinks that most of my music comes straight from the musical garbage heap, which I think is my bad juju for mocking Dad over his Country Christmas Allstars record. It's a good thing, listening to Christmas music your own way.

Now if I could just get over feeling guilty for failing to provide a constant stream of MoTab all December, all would be peaceful and bright.

What's on your Christmas playlist?

PS: writing about music is HARD. Unless you, the reader, has heard the song I am writing about, none of this matters. Must learn more about writing about music!
 

A continuation of the things I am thinking about, the things that make me happy:

1. This ad for Levi Strauss. So much that it's the second time I've mentioned in on my blog. We debauch upon a new and mightier world, O Pioneers! I love it.

2. Snow, snow, and snow! Even though I had to drive in it this morning in my little car, which is like driving a soda can in the snow...spins at the tiniest provocation. Still, the peaceful, the-world-won't-end-this-year feeling that snow brings: I love it.

3. New haircut and color, and I got my eyebrows waxed. WHY do I wait so long between haircuts? (Not between the waxing though. What kind of a slacker do you think I am???) Haley got a haircut today, too.

4. Wearing my hiking boots to shovel snow in. Why didn't I think of that before? They don't slip at all, and they're warm.  Toss in a brand-new snow shovel (wheeeeee! We are big spenders at my house!) and I almost don't mind the fact that most of the shoveling this year will be done by moi. (Because of his surgery, Kendell can't lift more than five pounds for six more weeks.) (Boychildren, however, are being encouraged to help.) Honestly, once I am out shoveling I really like it. It's just those first, few, very cold moments.

5. Going through the bag of new Christmas decorations I forgot I bought last January at a 90%-off sale. Do you see that? 90% off! I got some cute things. Lucky I found them before Christmas is over, yes?

6. These little beauties:

I'm not Martha Stewart when it comes to frosting cookies (obviously!) but I do make a mean sugar cookie. The secret: almond extract in addition to vanilla. Gives them just a little edge in the yummy factor.

Plus, know what else I love about sugar cookies? I am usually so exhausted after staying up late to finish decorating them, I don't want to eat one until the next day. I have cookies, but I don't have a compulsion to eat them.

I will tomorrow. First, though, I am going to sleep while my counters look like this:

mostly because I think the mess looks so pretty!

but further proof of my general housewifery lameness:

Why does my back porch look like a snow picnic?

Well.

See that cute tin with the angels on it? I've owned that for about 15 years. It's good for a lot of things: a place to set the golden stuffed-bear angel on, a platform to pile gifts on under the tree on Christmas Eve, a storage for things during the rest of the year. Last year, as the previous year, I stored my Christmas plates and cups in it. I unloaded them from the dishwasher, and then dried them with a clean towel. Then I wrapped each item in a freshly-laundered Christmas dishtowel, and topped it all with a floppy reindeer for extra padding. Put the lid on, set the angel tin on the shelf, thought all was well.

But slowly, all year long, havoc was being wrecked inside the angel tin. For who-knows-what reason, mold was quietly growing on the contents. MOLD! I cannot figure out why. The dishes were clean. The towels were clean. Even the tin was clean.

Still, when I lifted the lid of the tin yesterday morning---the last Christmas stuff I had left to get out---I breathed in a lungful of mold. The towels---my favorite holiday towels---were coated with a layer of fluffy, delicate fuzz. And the dishes---the ones I could see after removing the only-slightly-moldy reindeer---had a dust of mold, too.

I put the lid back on very quickly.

Then I carried it out to the porch, set out the dishes so the wind could blow away the mold dust, piled the fuzzy towels and reindeer back into the fur-lined tin, and shut the door. Then it started snowing.

Of course, the tin and the towels and the reindeer will be thrown away. But I'm thinking the dishes are OK. I soaked them in bleach, and then I washed them with hot water, and I rinsed them again in boiling water. And then I ran them through the dishwasher.

But I'm still perplexed: how did all that mold grow? Dishes, tin, and towels were all dry and clean. I can't figure it out. So I'm chalking it up to yet-another Amy failure and moving on. This might, however, delay that housefrau-of-the-year award just a little bit.

in washing socks when:

A. it takes 45 minutes to gather them all up (searching under beds and inside covers and in the back seats of cars)

and

B. there is room in your gynormous, extra-extra-extra large washing machine for socks and one bathroom towel.

Or maybe it's just a sign that we own too many socks? Of course, there are six of us, and all of my boys have fairly large feet.

At any rate, I am expecting my Housefrau of the Year award any. day. now.