Denim Day

I used to love those specialty days during grammar and high school where you got to dress in creative ways: school spirit day, picture day, character fair day. It was a big deal at my Catholic schools because otherwise we were all wearing the same plaid uniform day after day and year after year. I never lost my love of thematic dressing and now Sadie and Simon have to endure my flights of sartorial fancy. Pictured above is our homage to denim: Sadie in her little denim dress and Simon sporting the Oshkosh overalls. If there is something cuter than a chubby baby boy wearing overalls I have never seen it.

I haven't been able to post much during December, even though I thought I would be so above getting sucked into holiday frenziness. Turns out, celebrating both Hannukah and Christmas is actually more work. I didn't see that coming. I was too busy buying blue Hannukah wrapping paper and Christmas tree ornaments. I am also toying with the idea of figuring out how to make a latke a little less...well, fried. It's so damn fried. I want to enjoy the holiday and the traditional food but a plate of brisket and a fried ass potato is gonna set me back a bit on the old health front. I think it's probably rude to mess with a tradition that has worked for Jewish people for many, many years, but I may be brash enough to tackle the latke. We'll see.

Other December highlights include extra time being a super model parent. Ask Sadie about what happened when Jeff and I let her lick a serrano pepper on Saturday? Be careful if you bring it up, though, because she may start to cry and talk about how "spicy" it was. In our defense, she kept asking to taste it and we let her just barely lick it. I honestly didn't know that her whole chin would turn red and she would cry for 30 minutes. After she licked it, we fed her milk and cheese and chips and water and anything we could think of to get the "burning" to stop. I am pretty sure that little exercise qualifies as tough love.

Other than that, it hasn't been easy to buy a bunch of presents for myself, wrap them and put a card on them that says, "To Mommy / Love, Daddy." I am so overwhelmed at Jeff's generosity. He has no idea what he got me, and he's going to be so excited to see it all. I can't wait until Christmas morning.

I also took a night off to go to see A Dangerous Method with a friend. Ah, a movie date with a girlfriend. It's better than a week of therapy, which is a good thing, because guess who's therapist took off for two weeks during the holidays. Don't they tell therapists to stick around during the holidays because of the whole suicide thing? I am pretty sure that people get depressed during the holidays and could use some therapy. I am not asking him to miss the high holidays, I just want him around so I can complain about feeling fat after I eat those latkes. Actually, his absence really just interrupted my running schedule because I run to therapy and that's a nice long 4.5 miler for me. With him gone, how do I get that run in? Nothing says attachment like "you fucked up my running schedule."

Anyway, I am working on my vision for 2012. It's going to be the year of the risk. I am going to push out of my comfort zone and dream big this year. Either that or I am going to keep doing what I am doing and risk feeling more shame about having such a fantastic life.