December came and went faster than I can remember any of the Decembers past. A combination of having a school aged kid and a retail shop both in conjunction with holiday travels and other get togethers that seem to trump ordinary life, like doctor appointments, that typically fill the little ol’ boxes on the little ol’ calendar. A whirlwind that has me wondering how it’s January and I’m still standing.

I remember writing a post about Christmas cookies that I never got around to making when Hooper was a toddler. The post spoke to the infamous ‘mom guilt’; how in an instagram snap-happy world of decorated mantles and garland-line banisters I couldn’t even manage to put some damn cookies in the oven. Fast forward to present day, where we had dinner with friends with intentions of having the kids all make cookies; ending instead with a big mound of dough, an unhealthy serving of sparsely spread out large groupings of sprinkles, and a few contaminated droplets of wet sneeze all to prove that no one cried over cookies that were imperfectly perfect and questionably editable. That despite long to-do lists and short days the magic of Christmas runs in a child’s bloodstream the same way liquor seems to take over ours.

And so it goes; what is a whirlwind for us is a wonderland for them. Christmas cookies, two visits to Santa, an evening at zoo lights, way too many presents (it deserves a post of its own, but seriously, how do you combat the amount of toys and stuff people get your kids for Christmas… it’s insane), a road trip through Arizona, a load of celebrations with family and dinners with friends, and so on and so forth.

And now, in January, nothing but a shit load of pine needles I recruited Hooper to help me vacuum up the other morning and a fake Christmas tree stuffed back into the top cabinet it came out from seemingly yesterday.

Entire seasons coming and going, kids growing and maturing. All of it way too fast. And so, I record what I can, write down the tidbits I want to remember, and suck up the fact that it’s not at the speed that I want but it is, indeed, everything I want.