now

I am enjoying Christmas a lot, so far. Sure, there was a wobbly moment before dinner last night when I thought it was all going to be doomed and we wouldn't be carrying off that feeling of perfect peace and goodwill for one day let alone one month if Tiny didn't Get Off the iPad and Come To The Table Immediately! But we sailed through that and out the other side and the Christmas spirit endured.

It helps that a lot of Tradition Establishing legwork has already been done. Gone are the days when I had to convince my OTL that Christmas was more than a hastily bought gift and a good meal. Now he rises first thing on December 1st and gets us all out of bed with New Orleans-style Christmas carols blasting from the stereo. He is now in it for the long haul, I do believe.

Tiny, too, is feeling the first stirrings of tradition. When you're little it is hard to remember back an entire year, but this year I can see him retrieving shiny strands of half-forgotten Christmases from his little inner filing cabinet. "Yes," he says, "Santa doesn't come until we are aaaaaall asleep." (Although he is still a little dubious about strange men coming in the night. Presents or not.)

Unsurprisingly, it is the little, red satin lined suitcase of Christmas books that lights his Christmas flame the brightest.

Although I had every intention of creating my own family Christmas traditions, it's hard to know as you're going along what will stick, what will endure. Here, where our rhythms are still new and our footprints have barely begun to show, it is comforting to find that not everything changes. That there was enough "us-ness" before to follow us to now.