It's 2017!

How can he be 27? He was just born yesterday.

People! We made it!

We are done, done, done with 2016, and are now in 2017. If you are kind (and I am confident that you are) you will not point out that nearly half of the first month of 2017 is now over, and I have not even checked into this space to assure you that 2016 did not save a giant sinkhole to swallow me as a final act of mwahahahaha-ness.

No, the final week of the Year That Shall Not Be Named was filled with Boys!LovelyGirl!OtherRelatives! and all kinds of marvelous reminders that in spite of my complaining, life continues to treat me as if I'm a treasured jewel.

I didn't chronicle our Christmas in this space, though, because I was busy cooking. Apparently childbirth is not the only time that mothers are gifted with amnesia. I had totally and completely forgotten that family in the house expect to eat, and quite often this includes three meals a day. (I know! Outrageous!)

Apparently they do not, as I had assumed, live on good feelings because we ate a LOT during the two weeks that the House on the Corner was filled to the brim with love and laughter. And power cords. Oh, and size 12 shoes. We had soups (white bean chili, red chili, bread bowls, sweet potato and baked potato chowder, Italian vegetable), snacks (peanut brittle on demand, Muddy Buddies, Chex mix, peppernuts), TWO Christmas dinners (ham, four-cheese garlic lasagne), and more desserts than have been in the house for the past two years (peppermint pie, lemon cheesecake with blueberry sauce).

By the time we reached the final dessert, the carrot cake that celebrated Boy#3's birthday (can we all just agree that January 2 is the worst day of the calendar to have a birthday?), all of us were done with food. Finished. Over it.

I was afraid they were going to harvest my liver for foie gras.

So now we're living on salads and clear-broth soup, and I'm beginning to feel like a functioning human being again, enough to thoroughly appreciate how wonderful the end of The Stupid Year was. I'm marveling (and more than a little embarrassed) that I am so blessed that I can complain about TOO MUCH FOOD.

Welcome, 2017. You're just what we need.