It's New Year's Eve, where is the lampshade for my head?

Notice the timestamp; It is 8:30pm on New Year's Eve and I am updating a blog, having some creme soda (that will turn to Chardonnay soon) and anxiously awaiting my husband to get home. Yup, a far cry from years gone by when I was sitting on a bar stool in Manhattan with a million of my closest friends or in a hotel room at the base of a mountain drinking to calm my nerves about my first ski lesson happening the next day (note: easy New Year's resolution alert, don't go to NY for New Year's Eve and only ski again when I am doing it in hell because it just froze over). No, this year is different. The only confetti I will see will be on television and I will only get a taste of the Big Apple through Dick Clark's Rockin' Eve. There are only two people I "party" with these days and one is at work and the other, well she is sleeping soundly, oblivious to fireworks and frivolity and acutely uninterested in calendar changes.



I have no New Year's Eve resolutions; I find it to be a particularly masochistic practice as it almost inevitably results in failure and goals unachieved. Besides, this year my accomplishments all belong to Zoe and seeing what she has done in one year would surely overshadow any trite resolution that I might come up with. Really, how do you compare "lose weight" with "learning to walk" or "save money" with "understand language"? Impossible. So instead of such predictable and annoyingly unattainable resolutions I will simply watch Zoe and allow her to continue to inspire me. Instead of "eat more spinach" I will look at Zoe and understand what it is like to have to repeatedly get up when you fall. Instead of vaguely aspiring to "learn something new" I look at my daughter and get a keen understanding of just how much work that takes and stand in awe of why it is so worth it.



Happy New Year's Eve!
Cheers to a New Year and another chance for us to get it right. --Oprah Winfrey

A Red Rider BB gun?! You'll shoot your eye out, kid!

What's the matter, little one? It's the most wonderful time of the year! You know, sugar plums dancing, chestnuts popping, all the Whos in Whoville celebrating. Ah, wait a minute; you two haven't been formally introduced. Last time you met you were asleep and, well, it has been a year. This is Santa Clause. . . aka, St. Nick. His job is to bring all the good little girls and boys gifts on Christmas morning. My guess is that your Christmas list consists of get me off the lap of this crazy man who thinks it is appropriate to wear a velvet suit in 80-degree Savannah weather and for me to let you play in the bathroom cabinets at will, but soon that will all change. I promise one day I will use Santa to blackmail you into behaving. . . ummm, what I meant to say was, one day you will find the magic in this man who is so generous with his love for the children of the world. You will write a letter to him detailing all your Christmas wishes and leave him cookies on Christmas Eve. You will pick your favorite reindeer (those are the animals that help him get all over the world, kind of like big Sadies but with antlers and the ability to fly. They are also probably much better on a leash) and you will be pleading to sit on his lap. I know, it seems a little strange, and after the fish costume incident I can't really blame you for not trusting me. But one day you will understand the enchantment of this season; you will believe, as all children do, in the inherent beauty of the holiday and find happiness in all that is right with the world. Yes, Zoe, there is a Santa Clause.