Christmas decorating

It's impossible to believe it's nearly Christmas. Part of it is, I think, because it falls on a Sunday this year; Christmas on a weekend seems so sudden and truncated, as though you were just fitting it in between regular working hours.

And the other part, quite possibly, is because it was 12 degrees Celsius outside today, and I ran across the street without a jacket and without feeling the least bit cold, and it's a lot harder to find Yuletide cheer when it's sleeting; you really have to work for it.

Christmas snuck up on me this year. Truthfully, though: Christmas sneaks up on me every year. November tends to blow through my calendar like the wind it is famous for and then, well, there it is. And another truth: everything has snuck up on me this year. Understandably so, I would imagine. We did, however, manage to get a tree last weekend, and to decorate it:


It's a bigger tree than we've had before, so we had to get some new ornaments — it was looking a little sparse. My favourite (aside from the obvious) are the "12 Days of Christmas" ones.



I also made a vignette for the fireplace. We're working on getting the "wood burning" part of it working properly again, but it's a multi-step process and the saving of the funds for it is ongoing.


We also went to the Christmas market at the distillery district last weekend, but the only photographs I managed to take were those of the reindeer. The culprit was the excellent poutine: I was occupied in the eating of it, when I wasn't pushing the stroller, and had no hands for the camera. (I regret nothing.) In any case, it was a fun time but the impetus for it was kind of silly: as I was growing up, my family didn't do the big Christmas celebration (they still don't), and every year, that was a little disappointing. So now, of course, I have all these fantasies of giving the baby that perfect, beautiful, Germanic Christmas that I never had, filled with Christmas markets and falling snow and Santa Claus.

Except, you know what? She's a baby. She doesn't care. She fell asleep, and then she was cold, and then she was hungry, and then we went home.

Her feelings are probably healthier than mine.

update

So, it's December. Apparently November was National Blogging Month (or some such) — by-the-by, why is November always the designated month for all things creative? It's also the month for novel writing and sweater knitting (and moustache growing, but that's different) — is it really that bad? It is a dreary month, no doubt about it, but is it really that much worse than, say, March? — anyway, November, blogging, it didn't happen. Much like the four months previous to that. I had all these plans (I always have plans, granted) — it would have been five months, exactly, since my last post, on the 30th, and wouldn't it be nice to post then? Undoubtedly, yes. But obviously that didn't happen.

Whew, what a preamble. At any rate, five months, give or take, and in the immortal words of Inigo Montoya: let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.

We had a baby. That was more or less expected, although the timing was awkward (and tilted, rather dramatically, toward the unexpected column). It was a fun first two months. However: everybody is well; everybody is sleep-deprived. That was more or less expected, too. And that really is the sum total of the past five months.

(The garden? What garden?)

I finished a bunch of knits. A cardigan, some small things. Having a baby is actually really great for stash-busting: it's hard for me to get to the yarn store, and shipping from WEBS is expensive, so I've been using stash. It's actually been kind of fun, except now I really have to evaluate: exactly how many hats/scarves/cowls do I need? (Answer: probably significantly less than what I've already got. It's a little bit of an addiction.)

ETA: I've been holding off on posting this until I could add a photo of the baby (because everybody loves a photo of the baby!). But Picasa is eluding me this morning, Pd is sleeping and thus cannot help, and the baby is, sadly yet understandably, not yet technologically ept. So you're just going to have to go without, sorry.