I started writing an all-the-feels post and then realized I had some gift guides in the hopper, and it’s already December 5th which means I Rip Van Winkle’d from Thanksgiving until now because I have no idea how it could possibly be December 5th.

We’ve pretty much wrapped up our holiday shopping and are happy to be enjoying our days at home right now. For those of you who are still shopping, below is our big fat gift guide with lots of our favorites for kids.

And two of my favorite holiday moments this week–one from our family pictures and one capturing Dash’s impressive self-control. He’s done so good to look and not touch the snow village this week.

Stocking Stuffers for Kids


1. Paper Airplane Squadron Kit Because MORE PAPER MESS all over the floor is exactly what you want for Christmas morning.
2. Snake in a Can of Mints Prank Anything jokey and prankster goes over well in our home, encouraged heavily by Brett. Just make sure the kids do not use this snake-in-a-mint-can on the 85-year old neighbor who just returned home from heart surgery.
3. Questions for Family Dinner This is a mini box, around $5 and a great way to encourage good conversation during dinner.
4. Jessie Jumbles Hair Accessories Love these little retro accessories–a whole bunch of them available at Jessie Jumbles Etsy shop
5. Kathy Kruse Nickibaby Doll The weighted body of this little doll makes it extra special, and it’s the perfect size to peek over the top of the stocking.
6. Road Tape No need for an expensive road table with this inexpensive tape that can be mapped out across a nice stretch of floor. Add some little cars, and you’re all set.
7. Trick Dogs Magic Trick Kids love magic.The end.
8. Neon Scratch Notes
9. Anne of Green Gables Paper Dolls Yes! They exist! Bosom friends and kindred spirits in the form of paper dolls. And puffed sleeves–the puffiest ever.
10. Tattly Temporary Tattoos Our favorite temporary tattoos with an impressive collection of art and illustrations.
11. Uno Every home should have it.
12. Break Your Own Geodes. This box of ten gives you enough to drop a couple in each kid’s stocking. Your kids will love breaking these open to find the hidden crystals inside.
13. Love Chic Baby Perfume Perfume made just for little girls and boys
14. Rhinestone Slap Watch
15. Djeco Paper Doll Kokeshis Beautiful 3-D dolls with easy-to-follow instructions for putting them together.
16. Fingernail Friends Turn little hands into a zoo with these stickers made for fingernails.
17. Tin of Stockmar Beeswax Crayons
18. Dinosaur Fossil Excavation Kit For little paleontologists–a tiny kit, perfectly sized or stockings.
19. Stripe Knee Socks Roll ’em up and tuck ’em right above the orange that goes in the stocking toe.
20. Folkmanis Lop Bunny Finger Puppet The snuggliest little bunny that comes to life.

Gifts for Kids



WEAR
Children On Parade Dress from Cat and Mouse on Etsy. Black Peter Pan collar plus this whimsical illustration = kiddie fashion win.
Lit 101 Shirt from Passive Juice Motel. Shel Silverstein, Maya Angelou, Roald Dahl, Hemingway, Jane Austen, Steven King–all the literary greats combined in hip tyke wear. Love this shirt.
Scottish Tartan Clogs from Cape Clogs. Cute little statement piece for jeans or with a skirt and tights. Bagpipes optional.

PLAY
Under the Nile Doll. I found this doll in a little shop in Traverse City this summer and surprisingly managed to save it to give to Nella for Christmas. It’s so well made, is the perfect size and comes with a cute little purse that holds an extra outfit. Great for girls and boys.
Little Libarian Kit. I would have been obsessed with this as a kid.  Who am I kidding, I’m obsessed with it now. Transform the books your little one already has into a pretend library and make it legit with this kit–everything you need to play librarian: library cards, overdue slips, due date cards, card pockets, reading journal, etc. Add this due date stamp to make it even more fun and prepare for hours of reading fun and imaginary play.

READ
What Do You Do With an Idea?. I get teary when I read this to my kids–a simple story that represents the powerful truth that ideas are important and that no matter what people think of yours, don’t let them wither–your ideas lead to big, beautiful things and can change the world.
Kiki & Coco in Paris. The girls love this book. Gorgeous photographs and a cute story.
Hailstones and Halibut Bones. An oldie but a goodie. We keep this on our nightstand and frequently open it and let the kids pick out a color poem to read. It’s full of beautiful imagery and is a great creative writing tool to prompt children of all ages to create their own color poems (one of my favorite writing lesson memories from teaching days).

MAKE
Project Runway Make-up Kit. Perhaps my inclination toward this gift is related to the fact that I’ve caught my kids digging through my make-up bag far too many times and have the dug-out lipsticks to prove it. Lainey’s also been asking a lot lately to do my make-up, and sister has a tendency to go Tammy Faye. So this is perfect–all the paper faces her heart desires and the make-up it takes to make them beautiful.
Kiwi Crate Subscription. A gift that keeps on giving. Everything your kid needs to make crafts, build models, explore science, etc.–delivered to your door each month.

Happy Weekend, Friends!

The leftover turkey has been rationed out to post -Thanksgiving sandwiches, the table cloth has been washed and put away, and all that remains of the holiday are two pies, a fluted rim of crust still intact half way around their pie plates and their middles completely devoured animal-style and left on the counter like carcasses in the Serengeti. I admit, I am part responsible for their demise—not fully, of course—but I may have stabbed the first fork past the clean lines of the last cut, giving permission for others to follow. It’s just that I “didn’t want a whole piece” and besides, it’s the only way to steal the best parts of the pie—the sugary-est crust and the plumpest cherries.

Speaking of sugary crust, I’d now like to break into my top ten favorites about Thanksgiving, thank you.

10. The juxtaposition of cold tart cranberry relish against warm and filling stuffing and potatoes.

9. A table set with all the pretties and more chairs and plates than it’s made for.

8. The kitchen chaos that erupts 10 minutes before we eat. Bodies everywhere, dishes clanking, silverware drawers yanked open. “I need another serving spoon!” “Where’s the gravy bowl?” “Did you put the salt and pepper out?” “Shut that timer off!” I love it all—the perfect reverse of calm before the storm. It melts into such beauty once everyone’s called to the table.

7. Traditions. Nine years (if I recall correctly) of pajama breakfasts with our neighbors. Parade. Football. Cherry Pie. The way my mother-in-law asks every single year before she pours hot gravy into my glass gravy dish, “Ya sure this isn’t crystal? Because one time I did this in a crystal dish and it shattered everywhere.” Same dish, still not crystal. Calls and texts to and from family, recounting everyone’s day. Pictures of snowy backyards sent from the north. Pictures of palm fronds and sunshine sent back.

Shopkins kids placeholders #FTW

6. Brett’s holiday and tradition enthusiasm that matches mine.

5. Kitchen clean-up, following the antiquated routines of menfolk relaxing in the living room while womenfolk wash dishes in the kitchen, but we’re cool with it. Post-Thanksgiving meal is one of the rare occasions where cleaning up the kitchen after a big meal is actually fun, performed assembly-line style and accompanied by much laughter. And then pie.

4. A full house. People. On my couches. In my kitchen. Hovering around the barstools. Gathering at the table. Picking at the appetizers. Staying well past the declaration that “we should probably leave soon.” Let my people stay (as Moses almost said had things been a little better in Egypt).

3. The fact that you feel like you are well into vacation mode on the morning of Thanksgiving and yet you know that you still have Friday, Saturday and Sunday to go.

2. Making pies with my girls, aprons, flour dust everywhere.

1. Thanksgiving Grace. I kept my eyes open during grace and scanned the room this year, and it felt a little bit like being the only one awake to watch the sun rise. I matched words and thankful phrases with the people and scene before me and retraced the moment over in my brain so it would stick.

And now, here we are, December.

Thanks to a nice collection of holiday mishaps and boo-boos, I’ve rewritten the words to 12 Days of Christmas. I won’t sing the whole thing for you, but it does include “4 princess Band-aids, 3 bloody tissues, 2 antibiotics and a (this part, with gusto!) chair slip and a cheek scab.” But that was November, and along with Brett’s Movember ‘stache, we have shaved it off and moved on.

Hey Nella, where’s Santa?

We said goodbye to our old Frosty this year. After many years of service, his electrical parts have called it quits and after a few minutes with Dash, so has his exterior. As of this morning, his head was wedged between two palm trees and his bottom half was peering out from a bush a few feet away.

He served some good years.

Lots of twinkly, crafty, gifty, homey, festive things to come. It’s DECEMBER!

Before you click out because that title makes me sound like a real bloggy asshole, wait…

I decorated six monster cupcakes on Halloween–six because I ran out of eyeballs and got tired of slapping frosting and arranging candy teeth, and six because that’s exactly how many it took to fill a plate so that my efforts looked intentional and festive, possibly tricking anyone who happened to stop by into thinking I had my Halloween shit together instead of what they were really thinking which was, “Your kitchen’s a pit.” This also keeps me from feeling like everything’s falling apart when the kitchen’s a mess and I can’t find the pieces to the costumes and the sun is setting and there’s chili bubbling out of the pot and two kids are running around naked and Brett’s not home from work yet and neighbor kids are prematurely knocking on my door asking for candy when I can’t remember where I put it. But look! I made monster cupcakes! I cropped out all the mess in this photo, and there’s a candle burning and little pumpkins, and everything is perfect!

I had great intentions for a storybook Halloween. The dinner, the clean house, the music, the way we’d huddle as a family over the table while a nice candle glow illuminated our laughter. We’d clean up dishes with just the appropriate amount of time left to put on costumes which kids would slip into effortlessly and then hold hands as they walked down sidewalks–certainly not darting in any other direction except forward, together–and chirp in unison, “Trick or Treat!” while Brett and I held hands behind them, grinning and gazing at each other like cheesy parents, our silent but obvious “we’re so blessed” ringing through the night like the theme song to our own made up family sitcom. Family Ties but better.

There are two things I should point out here.

1. I do this with everything. Even though nothing ever turns out like the movie-like stories I create in my head, I still envision them, over and over. I think Einstein defined this as insanity. I blame it on all the movies. What can I say, my imagination is a very optimistic stallion that cannot be tamed. A stallion with a horn and wings and a rainbow mane, thank you.

Decorating luminaire bags which we filled with kitty litter and lined up along our driveway but never lit because we couldn’t find the lighter. Or the candles.

2. I’m rarely disappointed anymore when my stories don’t line up. I may be a rainbow-maned winged creature on the outside but, believe it or not, there is some crazy voice of wisdom that lives within. God bless her, she’s a survivor. She understands a little more about reality and smiles in a grandmotherly way at the silly glittery part of me who has a lot to learn. Wise Voice knows that Unicorns Gonna Unicate. When pretty family sitcom vision plays out to be a little more frazzled–a little more “don’t you dare roll this tape, dammit!”, Wise Voice takes over. She says things like “that didn’t go like we intended” but says it as matter-of-factly as reporting the weather. No big deal. Then she opens the gate for Unicorn to come running back in to sniff out the silver lining which she always finds. Or makes up, whichever comes first.

That said, we never even ate the chili I made before trick-or-treating. We didn’t have time. Brett got home late, and I barked “Can you please help me get them ready?” with enunciation on just the right syllables to infer that he never helps me do anything even though that’s simply not true. Dash wouldn’t keep a diaper on, Lainey’s Wendy nightgown needed to be ironed, and our house must have sent out some secret “NOT NOW” signal because neighborhood kids started knocking right when I was about ready to lose my shit. I was this close from answering the door, “Are you kidding me?! My husband’s in his underwear, we haven’t eaten dinner yet, and FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, I CAN’T FIND TINKERBELL’S WINGS!” But I smiled instead, overcompensating with enthusiasm delivered right on cue–“ELSA! Nice braid! Love the gloves! How’s Olaf?!”–and a fist full of Rolos.

We made it outside which always makes everything better. Just walk outside, even for a minute, and breathe fresh air and feel the walls fall down and watch your kids be cute and rock their Peter Pan get-up like nobody’s business. You’ll feel that cheesy “we’re so blessed” thing hit you like a brick.

Holding hands lasted for very little because Dash would have nothing of it. Dash would also have nothing of walking on designated pathways or with the group or at an appropriate trick-or-treating pace. He is wild and free and funny and tireless, and while that makes for some very demanding parenting days right now and consequently some funny quips about his never-ending energy, make no mistake these personality traits are cherished and seen for what they are–keys to the future! Whether it’s part boy (we get it: not all boys are energetic and not all the energetic are boys), part baby or most likely all Dash, we’ll pull our hair out while he summits the countertop and make jokes while he scans the room for what he can take apart, but we’ll simultaneously celebrate the beauty of what makes him tick–Curiosity! Determination! Perseverance! Problem-solving skills! You know what this means? He’ll start a company! He’ll run for Congress! He’ll invent something that will change lives for good!

Fly, Peter! Fly! I can’t stop with the exclamation points!!!!
 

He was banished gently repositioned to the stroller two houses into trick-or-treating, and our storybook Halloween evening reconvened.

The kids tired quickly this year. They were happy to come home, count their few pieces of candy, get their costumes off and slip into pajamas, and we were happy to take their lead. They were more excited to pass out candy than to get it, and between doorbell rings and the mustered enthusiasm for all the beautiful Elsas who came our way, we finally found time to get a bite of chili and clean up the kitty litter that spilled all over the driveway. We took Lainey out later for a fun Round 2 of trick-or-treating which made her feel older and special and very seen, and somewhere during the night I took a mental picture of my Unicorn and Wise Voice slow dancing together. To Michael W. Smith’s Friends are Friends Forever if you must know.

This is holidays with real families and lots of kids and roll-with-the-punches.

We never used the luminaires, but I remember watching Lainey make them and how she showed Dash what she was doing when he crawled up to investigate.

We didn’t trick-or-treat for very long, but kids who knocked on our door were greeted by all the little drawings that Lainey made to welcome them.

We don’t have very many Tinkerbell pictures, but I’ll be damned I got one of Nella swingin’ her hair the cold cozy morning that followed Halloween.

Our Halloween was perfect. Our kids were happy.

Here’s the cool thing about storybooks. Anyone can write one and any way they please.

Once upon a time, a mom made beautiful monster cupcakes on Halloween for the children she loved.

Don’t you forget those cupcakes.