Mom's Cooking Chicken and Collard Greens

Night #1 of Chanukah was pretty low-key. Baby was overtired and underwhelmed and just sort of stared at the candles while I fed him squash, then put him to bed. He got really screamy when we were getting ready to read stories and Mike brought in his present. He's sensitive about his bedtime routine, I think he thinks that the night is just HR and Mama time. What a funny little monkey.

About our future as a family, Mike and I plan to continue to celebrate all the holidays as we've been doing. HR will be neither baptized nor bar mitzvahed, and I know that there are many difficult and complicated conversations in our future, but the idea is that we'll be as honest as possible. I don't want to keep him from pursuing any kind of interest in religion, but I don't feel right foisting anything on him beyond our family traditions for obvious reasons. I don't think we have to worry about going down that road for years yet, but it's good to have a plan in mind, however vague.

I've made a holiday wish list just for me, as in, presents to myself from myself. So far it's only got two items, but the smaller the list, the more likely I am to make it happen. It begins with re-incorporating yoga in my life, for real. I'm missing it like crazy. I'm also bone tired much of the time, but I know that making the effort to establish a practice will eventually take care of that. I also want to work on rediscovering my sense of adventure in terms of fashion. For better or worse (or harem pants) I was such a daredevil in that respect when I was younger. My favorite outfit when I was a junior in high school was a white button-down shirt, jeans, a necktie (which my dad had to tie for me, every time) and my most comfy patent-leather oxfords with ribbon ties. I thought I was the bees knees when I dressed up like that, especially since I hadn't even seen Annie Hall yet. I also had an affinity for hats, which invited semi-unflattering comparison to Blossom (it was the early 1990s, what can you do?). In retrospect I was probably silly looking, but I didn't care, and it's something about me back then that I really liked. I think the old girl's got a statement or two left in her, we'll see.

I've got a lot on my plate today so it's time to dive in. But first:


Thanks to my culture-twin Kev for reminding me to bump this to the top of the list. Run DMC owns! And RIP, Jay. (Un)interestingly enough, Hollis was a name I considered for HR before Mike shot it down, and I definitely got the idea from this classic.

Happy Thursday, y'all. Happy life!