Whoa, Advent

The O Antiphons start today. Today. I have baked exactly zero Christmas cookies. Same with the fudge, the breads... No gifts are wrapped, and there's still a stack of Christmas cards sitting in my purse because I haven't managed to make it to the post office recently. I did finally get my act together yesterday afternoon and candy 10 cups of nuts, but that's the only thing I've accomplished. Last year, I'm pretty sure I'd begun baking mini loaves of festive breads to give as gifts and sticking them in the freezer the week before Advent began... I feel woefully behind.

But I probably shouldn't be comparing myself to last year, when I had a 1.5 year old who took 2+ hour naps and there was no one else asking anything of me. If I look back to our first Advent married instead, I was spending every possible moment curled up on the couch feeling miserable, and I don't think I managed any candied anything, or fruitcake, or stollen, and probably not more than one variety of cookie. As far as my pregnant Advents go, I'm doing pretty well here.

But really, it's time to start making some progress in ye olde kitchen.

Because I like schedules maybe a little bit too much, I actually went through and wrote down every single thing I'm planning to make, each on its own day so maybe hopefully they'll all actually happen. But now my schedule is all mussed, because I kind of want to add two things to the list and there aren't any more days... I know, not the biggest problem in the world; I'm just trying to be realistic about what I can accomplish in a day, with the baby stealing all of my energy. Getting groceries and putting them away this morning still has me tuckered out. The Christmas season is just beginning on December 25; maybe I'll push a couple more things off to the week after Christmas Day.

My list of "I totally can't accomplish all this before Christmas Eve":

- toffee bars

- shortbread

- spritz cookies

- fudge 

- Christstollen

- lefse 

- chex mix

- peanut butter kiss cookies (Matt and Little Bear will hopefully be making these some evening, because Kit still hates the smell of peanut butter)

- maybe some basic cutout cookies for Little Bear to decorate? Is he not old enough for that to be worth it? He's been having a lot of fun looking at the cookie cutters, but I'm not sure I'm up for that kind of chaos.

- also all of the local gift-wrapping and gift-giving and Christmas decorating...

There's definitely a difference, I've discovered this year, between the acclaimed prayerful intentional "celebrating Advent as Advent" and "decorating for Advent and then blinking and it's practically Christmas." Oops.

What's left on your list?