Oh, you must go see Caley’s darling new Christmas Eve baby! And get this: she named him OLIVER! (If you go to the comment section of the Namer’s Remorse post, you can actually SEE her choosing it.) Oliver is my favorite boy name, and it has been my goal to talk someone into using it. Hmm…..should I choose a new name now, or just a new pregnant woman?

I’m sitting here in a daze, drinking coffee in an attempt to animate my pajama’d limbs. There’s a baby tiring of floor time. There are two toddlers who are going to leak through their nighttime diapers soon if I don’t do something about it. There’s a third-grader who will sleep late and then not be able to get to sleep tonight. There’s a first-grader who wants me to tell him what he should make out of Model Magic.

But Paul is at work and it’s the postpartum stage of Christmas. The “unpacking after the trip” stage of Christmas. The “morning after” of Christmas.

The presents are opened and must somehow be incorporated into the household. The glitter is back to looking tacky. The wrapping supplies must be packed up and put away. The house will look bare and plain, and the whole long winter stretches ahead.

I got a running start on this stage by feeling even as Christmas approached that the whole celebration was a little nuts. We hang little sparkly doodads on a TREE we bring into our HOUSE? We all go out and buy things for each other and hide them in decorated paper? The whole holiday is basically about swapping things? I felt like an anthropologist trying to puzzle out the strange ways of an ancient culture.

And indeed, that’s what most of our Christmas traditions are: the strange ways of an ancient culture. “Christmas” is just the most recent name for a longstanding idea that winter could use a little glitter and booze to give it some life and hope. The current name was chosen by Christians who couldn’t participate in the established pagan winter holiday but didn’t want to give up the fun, either. Rename it! Give it religious significance! Then you can celebrate it! It was a clever workaround and the name was catchier than Pagan Winter Holiday, and it stuck.

Well, whatevs. We are not a religious history blog, nor are we truly anthropologists. Nor are we entirely sure when the word “anthropologist” can stand alone and when it needs an adjective such as “cultural” or “nutritional” in front of it. All we know (and can we drop the plural pronoun now? thanks) is that after Christmas is over, it seems like we still need glitter and booze.

The happy anticipation? Gone. The excuse to bake and eat? Gone. The pretty paper, the pretty ornaments, the pretty Christmas lights? Gone. The excuse to spend a little more? GONE GONE GONE. Now is the season for bills and for clean-up, and for commitments to diets that are going to be FOR REALS this time. It’s no wonder we feel accompanying seasonal emotions.

Lookee my presents!

The picture I wanted so badly from Black Sheeped’s Etsy shop. The light caught the protective plastic funny so the mat looks faded/splotchy but it isn’t. (Kara Marie, it is EVEN MORE WONDERFUL in person. I’m so relieved Paul was the one who bought it! Whew!)

This cute 3-pack of L’Artisan perfumes. MMMmmmmm, FRENCH!

Pretty pretty earrings I started hinting about after seeing them over at Shannon’s blog.

Books books books, because I love books and our local library is small.

This awesome “secret hiding place” book Paul made. He’d filled it with those round, gold-wrapped Ferrero Rocher chocolates, but, um, I eated them.

What did you get?

It’s so good to know I’m not the only one up this early, and that grown-ups everywhere are dragging themselves out of bed and pulling themselves along the floor soldier-style, trying to make it all the way to the coffee pot. And it’s also good to know that, statistically speaking, it’s unlikely I’m the only one who did ALL the shopping for ALL the children, mother-in-laws, father-in-laws, sibling-in-laws, teachers, mail carrier, bus driver, etc., and ALL the wrapping of those presents, and ALL the sorting and carrying and distributing, only to hear her husband ask 10 minutes before celebration time if he can help. Um, YES, you can go BACK IN TIME and participate when I ASKED you to, or at least JOIN IN THE CONVERSATIONS about what to get people, instead of SIGHING like I was asking you to LEVEL THE LEANING TOWER OF PISA.

*Ahem* I mean, MERRY CHRISTMAS!

El-e-e was asking about how people schedule Christmas, and Pann was writing about how when you have holidays at your own home for the first time it can be tricky to know what to do. So I’ll tell you how we do it in the Swistle Family, which includes Swistle, Paul, and kids; Swistle’s Mom and Swistle’s Dad; and Swistle’s Brother and Swistle’s Sister-in-Law.

We start “after naptime.” The quotes are because this holds true even if no one in the family is young enough to nap. We start at 2:30 or 3:00, after everyone is showered and coffeed and dressed and breakfasted and lunched and napped, and no one has to come to the celebration feeling gritty and tangled and exhausted while it’s still dark outside. Perhaps most importantly of all, we can go ahead and eat candy without worrying about breakfast.

First, everyone opens stockings, all at the same time. There is exclaiming and snacking and chatting and calling out, “Where did you GET this?” (one year my brother gave me a bar of Total Bitch soap—best stocking stuffer EVER).

When the chatting and snacking die down, we do the Child Gift Exchange: children take turns opening their presents and handing out the presents they have chosen for adults. There is much exclaiming and chatting and removing packaging and inserting batteries and reminding to say thank you, and the adults can continue to snack out of their stockings.

At this point it is time for a break: the kids are wound up, and the adults are worn out from the children’s excitement and from too many bites of chocolate Santa. It’s around 5:00, so it’s time for a light dinner. At our house we have Swistle’s Soup with garlic bread. (This soup is actually BETTER as leftovers, so it’s good for making ahead of time and not having to cook on Christmas.)

After dinner, the children change into pajamas and we go out on a Christmas Light Drive: just weaving around the neighborhood saying, “Ooooo, I like those!” and “Yick!” to our hearts’ content. We listen to Christmas music in the car.

Back home, it’s 7:00 and the children go to bed. Littler children go to sleep. Older children may stay up and read new books, but they have to stay in bed.

Because now it is time for the grown-ups to relax. The wine is brought out. Everyone changes into pjs or into comfier clothes. There are no children running wild. The snacking from stockings continues, and the gift-opening begins. We go around the circle, taking turns. Lots of chatting and exclaiming.

After gifts, the adults have a late dinner of worstenbroodjes, which are basically pigs-in-blankets but oh so much more delicious. Also, a red jello salad and a green jello salad.

It is so pleasant. We can genuinely enjoy the children’s gifts, and give the children a lot of attention. We can genuinely enjoy our own gifts, too, and not have to try to squeeze them in between the children’s hyper enjoyment of theirs. We can talk without shouting.

Here is the part we don’t know yet, because the oldest child in the family is only a third-grader: at what point does a child cross over into the adult group? We’re playing it by ear, but we’re thinking Rob is close to being ready. I think the most important part is that the child has to be old enough not to dominate the evening, and to get pleasure from watching people other than himself open gifts.

I have been way over-stressed about teacher gifts this year. From the way I have been fretting and storming (did you see my rantlet in the comment section of a Maybe Painted Pink post? oh good, don’t go look), you would think I was under the impression that the gift I give teachers is what will MAKE OR BREAK their Christmas. “This gift from Rob’s mom is CRAP,” the teacher would say. “Christmas is RUINED.” She’d go home weeping, shaking her fist at the sky. She’d snap at her children, sulk on the couch all through Christmas morning, and cry in the bathroom during Christmas dinner. She would go back to school in January, but the light would be out of her eyes and she would be considering going back for a degree in architecture instead. And who would be to blame? SWISTLE.

It is my own fault I feel this way. After years of having a wonderful time choosing gifts for teachers, I thought I’d go online to find some fresh ideas. And what I found out is that all the gifts I was giving were considered total crap.

I was pleased to find I was not bottom of the barrel. I give good-brand candles, good-brand soaps, good-brand chocolates–better and much more expensive than what I buy for myself. As one of my teacher friends cheerfully put it when I turned to her hoping she’d say the reports online were by an unrepresentative sample of rogue teachers (she did not), I’m at “the good end of the Bad Gift Spectrum.” Oh good.

You are asking to see one of my high school poems, but do you really understand what you’re asking? HIGH SCHOOL POETRY. Did you not read Mary’s comment about how awful high school poetry is? “Emotion, writ large (and poorly),” she says, and OH HOW RIGHT SHE IS. My primary emotion in high school was imagining myself in deep, conflicted, star-crossed love with boys I stared at in study hall and never talked to.

Plus, to select a poem to post, I would have to go through that folder (I’m sorry to say that “& Such” means “& Stream-of-Consciousness Essays”), and probably read more than one poem during the selection process. I did TRY, okay? I went through it a little, looking for a poem that would be humorously humiliating without being genuinely embarrassing. But GEEZ, Former Self!

There was a poem written so that the first letter of each line spelled out the name of one of the cute boys I liked to stare at; there are two stanzas, one for his first name and one for his last name. Another poem claims that love and sadness are very different emotions, then ends “…or are they?”—ellipses, italics, and all.

There is what I believe is intended to be some sort of ballad, describing the love between a young girl and a soldier who, in a stunning surprise twist, dies in the war. There is a reference to “the neverending ballet with the stars,” and a little notation that perhaps “with” should be “of.” (I don’t think the trouble here was prepositional.) Later on, I wonder in a margin if “like a cloud in the sky” would be better as “like a shadow in the night.” (Answer: no.)

I speak hand-claspingly of “love on a summer’s day,” not that I had any idea what that would be like. I explain in one poem that “when our eyes / meet / it is magic.” (Free tip for high school poets: It is not REAL POETRY if the line breaks make sense.) I point out earnestly that activities such as “dancing with children” and “picking flowers” and “looking at the stars” should be pursued, whereas MONEY on the other hand is unimportant. (Number of times I danced with children in high school: zero. Number of times I earned money babysitting them: seven bersnillion.)

There is the confession that I have “a heart that beats.” Good thing I saved these poems, so I’d remember what I was like! I had a beating heart, I’d almost forgotten! Also, evidently I thought that a woman in love (such as myself) would run to her boyfriend (such as the boy I stared at in English class) “like a zephyr.” Hi, English vocab list! Did I realize that zephyrs do not typically trip over their own pant legs?

I invited one lucky young man to “come fly with me.” I’m not sure what I had in mind, but I can tell you it was NOT what the young man would have thought I meant. (I believe I may have been thinking of the scene where Lois Lane flies with Superman.) There are references to “broken dreams” and “forgetting to dream.” There are “tears running down the windowpane,” and, oddly, “a palavar of sorrow.” A…what?

Some of them are written in PINK INK. I mean—GAH!

Let’s talk instead about the baby names in that post, and what I think of them a dozen years later. To review: the girl names were Fenchurch, Sophie, Molly, Quinn, Madeleine, Philippa, Ivy, Jill, Grey, Noel, Maizie, and Leaf; and the boy names were Jack, Joe, Sam, Luke, Milo/Miles, Leo, and Ross.

I don’t actively dislike any of the names. I still like Ivy and Jill and Madeleine for girls. I still like Milo/Miles, Leo, and Joe for boys, and in fact all three of them were strong contenders when I was pregnant with Henry.

I still like most of the other names, too, but now some of them are starting to sound out of date. Jack and Sam, which seemed so fresh ‘n’ sassy in 1995, are more usual now. And I wouldn’t use Grey or Leaf or Fenchurch, because that didn’t turn out to be our naming style. Maizie now makes me think of Maisy the mouse. (Also: grain.) I still like Sophie, but now would probably go for Sofia instead. Philippa is too hard to spell–I can’t remember if it’s two Ls and one P or one L and two Ps or…? It’s like Eliot/Elliot/Elliott/Eliott.

• Card received: +5
• Card received before December 1st: -1
• Card received after December 25th: -1
• Card is pretty, and looks nice on wall: +3
• Card is glittery: +1
• Card does not contain card, but only letter, so there is nothing to put up on wall: -3
• Card is e-card: -5

• Card includes photo or is photo card: +5
• More than one photo: +2 each additional photo
• Photo is non-Christmassy so will look good on fridge all year: +1
• Photo is Christmassy so increases holiday feeling of card: +1
• Red-eye causes family to appear possessed by evil Christmas spirit: -1
• Photo was taken on beach this past summer in summer clothing, so family looks chilly against winter pattern of card: -1
• Photo includes dogs with glowing eyes who seem poised to eat humans: -1

• Card includes letter: +5
• Letter is informative and interesting: +3
• Letter describes child as “amazing” or “already an avid reader at age 3!”: -3 each
• Letter is so braggy and saccharine-cheery, I wonder why I associate with these people: -3
• Letter is so very braggy and saccharine-cheery, it crosses over into comical and becomes fun to read aloud in an unkind tone of voice: +2
• Letter is a sermon disguised as a Christmas letter, and contains pious hopes for our country, for mankind, and for me personally: -5
• Letter mentions details of gross surgery: -1 or +1, depending on entertainment value
• Letter contains thinly-veiled family gossip: +3
• Letter contains information that should have been told earlier: -2

• Card includes check: +5
• Large check: +10
• Card includes announcement of pregnancy: +10
• Card from Christmas Card Friends contains surprising news of baby born since last card sent: +10

I was going through a box in the basement, looking for my childhood address book. I found it in a box that also contained this:

That is a MATH MEDAL, baby. So if anyone wants to talk about whether pregnancy is 9 months or 10 months, or how to figure out how many months pregnant you are when you’re 28 weeks along, or what the difference is between a child who is “4 months old” and a child “in his 4th month,” you just come talk to me. Me + math = medal.

Also in that box I found my baby name list from 1995.

Girl names:

• Fenchurch (it’s from the fourth book in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trilogy)
• Sophie
• Molly
• Quinn
• Madeleine
• Philippa
• Ivy
• Jill
• Grey
• Noel
• Maizie
• Leaf

Boy names:

• Jack
• Joe
• Sam
• Luke
• Milo/Miles
• Leo
• Ross

I also found this:

Poems. From when I was in high school. I think we’d better just back away slowly, don’t you?

Don’t keep asking me what the baby needs. You’re his father, you can go through the checklist as easily as I can. Food? Diaper? Sleep? Attention? New chew toy? Figure it out, genius.

Ask me what the baby needs when you don’t know. I’m with him around the clock, and there’s no shame in asking the expert. You’re acting as if you think listening to a woman would sap your manhood. Ask for some help, genius.

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Buy me something special and romantic from time to time. Come home with flowers. Tell me you couldn’t resist buying me those earrings. Bring me a bakery cake just as a treat out of the blue.

Oh my god, we are hemorrhaging money! You can’t just go spending willy-nilly on non-essentials or we won’t make the mortgage! I know you think this is romantic, but it won’t feel romantic when I’m balancing the checkbook later!

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Don’t tell me every time you change a diaper. What are you expecting, fireworks? I don’t tell you every time I change a diaper.

Tell me when you change a diaper. How can we work as a team when we’re not both up to date on what’s been done and what hasn’t? I feel like an idiot when I go to do a routine diaper change and find a totally dry, fresh diaper.

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Listen, I am not the only one with the magical powers required to pick up a gallon of milk. Could YOU be the one to go out for toilet paper occasionally?

I can’t believe you’re leaving me home with the children again. Don’t I get enough of this during the week?

Oh, dear, yesterday’s post was confusing, wasn’t it? First I say these are gifts I give to pineholes, and then I make a list of gifts you want. What are you to think?

Well, they ARE good gifts! I give these things to people I like, too. But in the case of pineholes, the gifts are good only to reflect well on me. I don’t care if he likes them or not, and THAT’S what makes them “gifts for pineholes.” Does he like to do puzzles? Does he need/want a fluffy throw? Who knows, who cares? It’s a Good Gift, and I am giving it to him to fill in the Gift Slot, but with the care/love ABSENT.

I’ve been renewing my efforts to turn off lights that don’t need to be on. (Oh, hi! Subject change!) It does not come naturally. I was feeling all proud of myself as I turned off three lights on my way to the kitchen for another cookie. Then I saw the fridge was partly open. Way to save the environment through care and attention, dimwit.

This morning I caught Edward putting the letter K from our alphabet puzzle into the return-air vent. I rescued it and asked him if he’d put anything else down there. He said “Yeh.” I said, “What?” and he said “J.” I wasn’t sure he knew what he was talking about, but I thought it was worth getting the screwdriver out and seeing what was what. Behind the vent I found SEVENTEEN letters from the alphabet puzzle, a plastic lid, and a lens from our google-eye glasses.

The hired plow that plowed the driveway of our across-the-street neighbors plowed the snow into OUR front yard. That’s…not right, right? I don’t even actually deep-down mind it (it makes a good natural fence between the front yard and the road, and also it’s just SNOW), but I mind IN PRINCIPLE. Paul saw the guy plowing snow into our yard, so he went outside and did a few minutes’ shoveling in our driveway, just to communicate, “Hey, we’re here and we see you.” While Paul was out there, the guy didn’t put any snow in our yard. Then Paul went inside and the guy immediately plowed a big load of snow into our yard (leaving big humps of snow in the road, too) and drove off. NICE.