I was talking to a friend at church about how sometimes I used to want to have this big idealistic life, but that I now settle for extremely simple pleasures, which I have since also given up on:

1. To have one room without any baby items in it. Keep dreaming, girl.
2. To watch 30 Rock when it comes on on Thursday nights instead of on Fridays on the internet. Pipe dream.
3. To go to the gym for longer than 45 minutes. Maybe next year. Ihavent entirely given this up yet.

I feel sometimes like my life has become an endless repetition of the same activity: Naptime, clean up the play area, switch laundry from washer to dryer, start dinner, eat something, get baby up, feed baby, play with baby. Lather, rinse, repeat.

But I like it. CHunkster sleeps through the night, and goes to sleep when I put him down, smiles at people, and only cries when he's hungry. I cant ask for a happier baby. It makes it easier to realize I'm on autopilot 90 percent of the time.

*******

Since Chunkster was born, Alex has been gung ho about traditions. I dislike pretty much any holiday except Halloween. It's clear that on Halloween, people just want free candy. I can deal with this. But Thanksgiving and Christmas disillusion me with the vague hidden materialism and PC "Reasons for the Seasons", and New Years is a giant drinking party. So I have always kind of ignored the holdays, preferring instead to particpate only as much as necessary and resume normal life on January 2nd. But this year Alex insisted we decorate something, so I gave in. We picked the staircase, since it doesnt accomodate a tree of any sort, and decorated it with our lame ornaments and some cool red beads and some pitiful looking fake garland I found on early clearance somewhere. I'm putting Advent like verses up as well.

But I dont really follow advent stictly. I like to look at it starting with the birth and death and life of Jesus, and then fill in either side with promises of His coming, and the other side with looking back at the cross. I'm acutely aware this year that oneside is better developed than the other, and I find it disappointing. But grace being the thing it is, I find that if I concentrate on rejoicing in my salvation rather than in all I dont know about God, it's easier to overcome my ignorance.
I've found that the advent part of the holiday has somewhat redeemed my cynical attitude about CHristmas. I still dont like christmas trees, and that might never change. But the looking forward and looking back- that's the cool part.