In With The New...

New Year’s Eve is a little different when you’ve got kids. For the first couple of years, Pam and I would drop our daughter off with my folks and head out with the younger set. I think one year we even brought her along to Dan’s decidedly non-baby-proof Baltimore rowhouse for his annual shindig. But with two of them now, it’s becoming a little more complicated. Not that my parents don’t offer to watch the kids plenty — we are singularly blessed in that regard — but it just seems like we’ve moved into a different stage in our lives. A friend of mine was arranging a $70-a-head hotel ballroom party. A few years ago, I’d have thought, “Great!” But now all I can keep thinking about is how we’d have to get up to pick up the girls in the morning, and deal with parking (the suburbs not being Metro-accessible), and hotel room costs... and would we really have $140 worth of fun?

Last year we really didn’t do anything, and that may have been overdoing (or rather underdoing) it. So this year we decided to invite a few couples — and their kids — over to our house for the evening. The kids could play, the adults could socialize, and while not a raucous time, it’d at least be something more rewarding than sitting in front of the television watching Dick Clark dessicate. (Our holiday season luck continued, and we had a few cancellations, but not enough to scuttle our plans.) All in all, it went well; much more sedate than a real party, but certainly entertaining. Our oldest even managed to stay up to see the big ball drop — which she found a little anticlimactic for the latest she’d ever been up.

Part of me misses the old days, but I’m glad we’ve been able to adapt.

Apologies to Bill Amend’s Foxtrot, but my New Year’s Resolution is also most assuredly 1920x1200. Not likely to happen, but it’s all about the aspiration, right?

Happy New Year, everybody.