Happy New Year

A very dear friend of mine starts each year by naming it; 2013 was The Year of Joy, and this year was The Year of Bravery. I’m looking forward to finding out the word she’s chosen for 2015. Looking back on this year, I would retrospectively call it either The Year of Illness (we caught everything; I’ve had gastro twice in the last couple of months. TWICE!!) or The Year of Sad (hello, Depression. I hate you. Please leave). Perhaps I could combine the two and call it The Year of Feeling Terrible? I have a feeling none of these options are included on my friend’s list of potential words to embrace for next year.

Apart from a handful of moments of pure joy (at Michael Franti’s concert during I’m Alive, when the chorus started and tiny pieces of paper and giant yellow balls shot out over the crowd; dancing my heart out at No Lights No Lycra with one of my best buddies; getting stuck halfway down a slippery dip with Hazel when the Ergo strap got caught around the top; multiple times during the Uniting Women’s Conference; opening the oven while baking and discovering my cake had grown an anus) and a couple of achievements (surviving a whole year with two kids! Finishing my Grad Dip!), 2014 was not great. I’m very happy to leave 2014 behind.

I like that our calendar lets us start afresh every 12 months, although I keep having to remind myself that there’s nothing magical about January 1st. I will still be me tomorrow. So if I was to name 2015 – to give it a theme as a starting point for making my resolutions and a benchmark for keeping them – though I’d like to choose something upbeat like my friend’s The Year of Joy or (more generally) The Year of Awesomeness, I’ve decided the most fitting option will be The Year of No Excuses. Or The Year of Just Do It. I need just one word, though… The Year of Action?

In 2015 I may still be depressed, unfit, lazy, pimply, addicted to liquorice allsorts, and unable to explain my theology, but it won’t be because I’m making no effort whatsoever to leave those things behind. There will be effort. There will be whinging. Hopefully there will also be change. Hopefully always for the better.

I was going to list a heap of books and movies I enjoyed that were released in 2014, thinking I was finally hip and with it, until I discovered that many of the books and movies I had in mind actually came out ages ago. Two books can stay: The Wife Drought by Annabel Crabb, which was inspiring in a life-changing way, and One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories by B.J. Novak, which I forgot to mention on my blog when I read it but really should have because it ended up being the funnest and funniest book I read all year and was inspiring in a maybe-I-could-write-short-stories way. The other books I particularly enjoyed that would have made it onto the list if they were published in 2014 were The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion and The Last Anniversary by Liane Moriarty. Maybe I should just make it a list of things I discovered in 2014 and loved…

Girls was my favourite TV show of the year, followed closely by Parks and Recreation. Enough Said, Bridesmaids, Celeste and Jesse Forever, Brokeback Mountain and I Am were five movies that I passionately adored and can remember the names of without reading back over my reviews from the year. Liquorice allsorts were by far and away my favourite food of the year. I will miss them with every ounce of my being in 2015. My favourite songs were 400 Lux by Lorde, the ones by Rufus Wainwright I mentioned in this post, and, up the very top of the list, I’m Alive by Michael Franti: close the blinds, turn it up, and go nuts, my friends.

Here’s to a joyful, awesome, love-abundant, goal-achieving, healthy, amazing-TV-movies-and-books-filled, fun and memorable-for-good-reasons 2015!

Catch you on the flip side.

Christmas is still confusing

So Christmas happened again – did you notice? (I thought I’d written my Christmas post last year, but apparently it was actually at the end of 2012! My goodness, the time is flying by.) Despite the two extra years of thinking about Christmas, I have made little progress towards feeling less confused about the season. Alan seemed to enjoy telling people this year, “Annelise doesn’t believe in Christmas,” which made my mother-in-law sigh as if she couldn’t think of anything sadder. I think a better explanation would be, “Annelise doesn’t understand Christmas, and therefore tries hard to ignore it.” 

The heart of the issue is that Christmas is a simultaneous celebration of two very different things: the birth of Jesus, and the arrival of Santa Claus. The “birth of Jesus” Christmas includes Advent, some Christmas carols, and some reflection on the life of Jesus: why is his birth significant? Does/should it change anything about our lives today? The “Santa Claus” Christmas involves Santa, reindeer, trees, decorations, presents, non-Jesus Christmas carols, a roast lunch, pudding and candy canes. (The name of the second Christmas isn’t perfect because not everyone who celebrates this one necessarily includes Santa… Maybe I should have called it “Tree” Christmas, or “Present” Christmas instead. Alas, it’s far too late now.)

I like Jesus Christmas. I get it. It gives the day a purpose that’s far less obvious in Santa Christmas. I’m not a huge fan of most Christmas carols, but I paid attention to the words for the first time in a long time at a carols event we went to recently, and found myself getting teary: it’s big and exciting news! Life-changing news, for Christians. Angels are excited about it! A king is born! People will live forevermore because of Christmas day! To me, it’s obvious that people who follow Jesus think his birthday’s some kind of a deal, possibly even a big one.

I don’t mind Santa Christmas. I like baubles and big lunches and beautifully-wrapped presents as much as the next regular, non-Grinch person. I’ll never be able to bring myself to tell Moses that Santa actually visited our place and left him anything, but I’m happy for Mo to get excited and wave at Santa in each and every shopping centre we visit during December (I’d also have no problem letting Mo have his photo taken with Santa, however Mo’s a bit terrified of him and waving is as close as he’s prepared to get to being friends with Santa at this point). It makes sense to me that people who have no interest in Jesus or his birthday celebrate this kind of Christmas instead.

My problem is when the two Christmases are mushed together as if they’re supposed to make sense combined. Carols concerts that feature songs about both Jesus and Santa. Rushing home from church to open a bazillion presents. I don’t get that! I don’t know how to explain it to Moses (and, in future, Hazel). I want to feel comfortable embracing both Christmases without feeling like my integrity’s at stake! I want to not be Grinchy! I want my mother-in-law to have one less reason to sigh at me! I want someone who’s figured it out to teach me, and then to teach me how to teach Mo (and, in future, Hazel)! Please!

I did have a couple of conversations with Moses about Christmas this year, along these lines:

Me: What’s Christmas about?

Moses: Jesus’ birthday.

Me: So why do people give each other lots of presents?

Moses: I don’t know. Do you know?

Me: No, I don’t know.

One time we talked about how Jesus lived and what he taught us about how to live, and I told him that celebrating his birth and life was the Christmas that made the most sense to me, and just as I was starting to think our chat had gone particularly well, he asked in a very worried voice if that all meant he wouldn’t be getting a Christmas present this year and I had to reassure him that he would. “But Christmas isn’t about us getting presents, is it, buddy?” I said. “Mo?” 

At least it’s a whole year now before I have to think about it again.

Weaning again | This is 40

The not-great picture above is Hazel at 6 months old, trying to fit her foot into her mouth while simultaneously breastfeeding.

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Hazel has decided to wean herself. At first it was only the right boob she was rejecting (my left boob was feeling quite smug for a bit), but then she gave up on the left one too (“HA HA!” said my right). I was planning to wean her around 18 months, as I had with Mo, and I wondered, when she first started refusing my milk, if maybe I’d feel sad if she gave up breastfeeding earlier. Now that she has given up earlier, I can report that I’m not feeling sad. I’m actually proud of her proactivity. When she is older and repeatedly wants to do things her way rather than my way, I will probably use different words for it.

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I’ve started noticing Judd Apatow’s name far more this year; I’ve only recently realised that he’s linked with a couple of my favourite movies (Anchorman and Bridesmaids) as well as with the TV show Girls, which I’m still loving post-season-two. I’ve started watching things I see his name attached to, which is what led me to This is 40, a film he wrote, directed and produced. I liked it; it was stupid and funny and fairly spot on in its depiction of marriage (especially the lack of mystery after years of living together [I remember reading a marriage book during our engagement which encouraged spouses to use separate bathrooms if possible, to preserve some mystery. LOL]).

I particularly loved the scene in This is 40 where Debbie’s dad is proudly showing her photos of his new kids (her half-siblings) and she appears to be weirded out by it (it is weird! I’ve never seen this played out on screen before! I loved it!), and also (and this is what reminded me of the movie in the first place) the scene where Debbie’s admiring her employee’s breasts and explains to said employee that her own boobs look the way they do because her kids “sucked the meat out of” them. This is exactly how I’d describe my boobs to anyone who bothered to ask. 

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So my breastfeeding days are now over. My favourite thing about feeding was making my babies smile as they sucked; I’ll miss that. And the snuggles in the morning. I’ll miss that too. Okay, so maybe I feel a little bit sad.