January is one of the more dismal months. No more decorations. Back to the regular routine. Diets and exercise. Bills. There’s MLK Jr.’s birthday to look forward to, of course, but other than that it’s just one long stretch of deprivation and paying the piper.

This is why I recommend that January be a month of small treats. “Small” because it’s a month of many kinds of restrictions, and we are not going to get anywhere by thwarting all of them. “Treats” because if we don’t find ANY small way around those restrictions we’re going to lose our will to live.

(And make sure you price it right: if it’s something you’d need buy anyway, the treat is only the amount EXTRA it costs. That is, if your regular fabric softener is $6, but the scent you really love is $8, buying it is only a $2 treat, not an $8 treat. If packing a lunch would cost you $2, but buying a lunch is $6, buying it is only a $4 treat, not a $6 treat.)

(photo from MrsMeyers.com)

Treat Idea #1: A nice smell. If you have perfume you don’t usually wear, wear it sometimes. Or buy a new candle, or get some perfume samples to try, or choose a new hand soap, or a new air freshener, or a new fabric softener. We are not thinking BIG here: even very small and ordinary things can be cheering.
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This week a little virus sped through our household: sore throats and 103-degree fevers for everyone except me. If I ever wondered if I might have been a good and kind and angelic nurse in, say, an army tent with rows of patients, the answer is “Probably not.” Six people asking for more juice, more water, a blanket, the remote, maybe another piece of toast, was pretty much all I could handle pleasantly, and probably the adverb “pleasantly” is pushing it a bit, even in much nicer conditions and with much less upsetting illness/injuries than would be in an army tent.

There are certain things I keep in the house always, so I have them on hand when illness visits us and don’t have to add “running to the store” to my toast-fetching list:
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That’s kind of a specific title, isn’t it? I expect the items we come up with will also work for non-relatives staying in non-hotels.

I am hoping to access the wonders that live in your skulls and come up with a list I can use right now—but that we all can use if/when we need it in the future. You were so helpful with the party favors thing and the face moisturizers thing (I’m going to try Olay Complete first, because I found a bottle in the cabinet, but after that I will probably have to say eenie-meenie-miney-mo because there were so many appealing suggestions).

Let’s say you have a relative, not in your immediate family but not distant either. Aunt-level sort of relative. And let’s say the aunt-level relative is going through something tough of an uncertain-outcome-bedside-vigil nature, and could use little carepackagey gestures of the sort that could be sent to a hotel room (as in, not a lot of stuff she would then have to lug home with her afterward).

The question is, what sorts of things would you send? I am thinking bakedy things (brownies, oatmeal cookies), but what ELSE?
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It is time to CHOOSE A CALENDAR, and I am not even a little bit kidding when I say this is one of the purchases I most look forward to each year. I had trouble limiting this post to only twenty possibilities, and in fact caved and added one more at the last minute. (All photos except the last one are from Amazon.com.)

1. Charley Harper. I had a Charley Harper last year, and I don’t usually repeat. But if you’re looking for a good calendar, I REALLY liked my 2010 one. Plus, the 2011 one is half off.

2. Master of Illusion. I’m not fond of people calling themselves “Master of” anything, and usually optical illusion is more my kids’ thing than mine. Still, this one appeals to me this year, and it too is half off.
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There are things that I hear people talking about for ages, about how great those things are, and I’m too Anxious About New Things to try them. And then one day I DO (or else someone does it for me, as when I was 21 and my dad signed me up for an email account, knowing I wouldn’t have done it until my thirties otherwise), and my life is REVOLUTIONIZED. My parents use the expression that something “has improved the quality of our lives.” And while that sounds like the kind of thing people might say about a new vaccine or an economic upturn, they use it for things such as a new shower caddy.

Ever since I had my second child (and, perhaps more importantly, moved to a house no longer within walking distance of the post office), I’ve been whining about how hard it is to go to the post office: the lines, and the limited hours, and hauling children in and out of the car for what ought to be a 2-minute errand, and why don’t they have a DRIVE-THROUGH?? My dad kept saying and Saying and SAYING that I could get a pre-paid label online and have my mail carrier pick up the package, but I felt like…maybe I couldn’t. Like what if that cost more money? what if I weighed it wrong? what if my mail carrier hadn’t heard of it and thought I was being presumptuous? what if I had to print it on special label paper instead of regular? what if there was a pick-up fee, or or or?
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I didn’t get too fretful reading that if I’m going to use reusable bags I’d better spend $20 or more on each one or else I’m doing Something Bad—especially when it seems to me that the ones TRULY SUFFERING when I buy a reusable bag for $1-5 are the companies that sell the same thing for more than $20.

I did however feel some concern when I read about how very, very, VERY many reusable bags will be purchased in a fit of Earth Day spirit (or given away as advertising) and then will not in fact be used—so that we still have the original problem of plastic bags stacking up underground like the neverending leaves of deciduous plastic trees, PLUS the problem of all these REUSABLE BAGS. One store I shopped at this week was giving out a reusable bag to each customer without even asking if the customer wanted one; I wonder how many of those bags were pitched out as soon as the customers returned home?
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[A note on this post: Do you get Night Sadness? Where it's the evening and you feel like everything is crappy and hopeless for no particular reason? It's kind of like depression except that it's only occasional and it goes away by morning. Anyway, when I wrote this post I had Night Sadness, and when morning came I felt happy about the holidays again---though I do still find I'm connecting each happy thing ("Almost time to put up the lights, yay!") with the corresponding sad thing ("Ug, and then we'll have to take them down, and they always look so tacky and sad as soon as Christmas is over"). And so then I felt a little silly about this post, but I'm on a deadline here so I'm going with what I've got---particularly because I am certain to feel this way again and again before it's January and we can relax and enjoy the inventory clearance sales.]

I’ve been up to my hairline in holiday shopping and I’m sick of it.
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Before my first son was born I was working full time, we had no childcare costs, my husband was well-rewarded at his job, and our investment portfolio had yet to begin its terrifying toilet-bowl downward spiral. I only have to consider the stroller we got back then in order to truly visualize how things have changed. It’s not that we’re in trouble now, it’s just that with my 3-day-a-week salary, my husband’s exciting-but-scary startup, two kids in daycare, college savings plans, and a staggering monthly grocery bill (the children eat NOTHING, and yet I keep TRYING TO FEED THEM!), there’s no way in h-e-double-hockeysticks I’d buy such a spendy stroller today.

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I have often thought that caring for a baby in their first year of life is like watching the lights come on in a house, one by one. First they’re all unfocused and mewly, then they’re laughing and doing that funny stationary leg-marching business, and soon they’re entirely purposeful and able to reach right out and grab what they want. Click, click, click, one room after another gets lit up in their brains, and their worlds open wider and wider.

If that’s true, then the stage around 18 months is like having all the lights on at once, blazing away, while a mad scientist operates the giant electrical switch powering it all. “MOO HOO HA HA HAAAA!” shrieks the apparition in the white coat, hair standing on end and eyes pointing in two different directions. “HA HA HA—WAAAAHHHHHHHH!”

Young toddlers are insane, is what I’m saying. They’re physically capable of outrunning you, yet they have no sense of self-preservation. Their emotions are as wild and unpredictable as a storm on the high seas, and the smallest trespass will send them flinging their bodies to the floor in order to throw a tantrum loud enough to detonate an adult’s eardrums at fifty paces. They kick, they slap, they throw things, they scream, they eat things that aren’t meant to be eaten while hysterically refusing things that ARE meant to be eaten.

Thank god they’re still formed entirely of Pillsbury thigh-rolls with baby-soft faces and the occasional desire to cuddle, because in my limited experience this is the age which most strongly begs the question, Would It Be Wrong To FedEx My Child to Octo-Mom, Since She Apparently Can’t Get Enough of this Crap?

So! Let’s talk about ways to survive the 18-month zone, and by that I mostly mean “let’s open up comments because I sure don’t know what the hell I’m doing.”
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I have always been scared of having to take my kids on a plane. We’ve never done it, because our family is close enough to visit by car, and every time I fly on my own I surreptitiously stare at other parents trying to manage small kids and strollers and bags and think to myself, oh thank GOD that’s not me.

The time has come, however, for me to nut up and face my fears, because I have the opportunity to take my 3.5-year-old on a trip to Washington DC at the end of this month. It will be just the two of us, and I am both thrilled about the adventure and, um, COMPLETELY FREAKED OUT.

We’ve been talking a lot about the trip and watching YouTube videos of planes taking off and so on; I feel like I’m doing an okay job on preparing him as best I can. He’s super excited about everything, but I know the fickle nature of a preschooler: it’s inevitable there will be some challenges along the way. So, what sorts of gear can help make it all a little easier? I’m hoping you guys can help me out, especially those of you with experience traveling with children. Here are some items I’m looking at:
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