For as long as I can remember, my family has had a tradition of having brunch the Sunday before Christmas at Tippecanoe Place in South Bend, Ind. It's a mansion that was previously owned by the Studebaker family and it's especially gorgeous at Christmas. In the beginning, my parents, myself and my brothers, along with three other couples and their families, made the trip every year. My parents met with these couples once a month and one year they decided they wanted to have a special outing with everyone's kids for Christmas. Today, only one other original couple remains besides my parents, but their kids now have kids of their own (and obviously I have a child as well), so we have a whole new generation participating. It's a day I look forward to every year and it's even more special now that I can bring my own little guy.

Except for maybe the first few years, the same Santa has frequented this restaurant for brunch every December, going around to all the tables to listen to each child's Christmas list. I remember listening for his bells and his jolly "ho, ho, ho," mentally preparing for my moment with Santa. It took a few years for Santa to remember us (after all, he sees a lot of kids every December), but eventually he recognized and came to expect our group each year. By this time, my youngest brother was the only child left in the group who was young enough to really get excited about Santa, so Santa always remembered him in particular. Both of my brothers are deaf, so Santa took the extra step of remembering a few signs so he could wish my brothers a merry Christmas without interpretation from my mom. This made my youngest brother love Santa even more.

One year, Santa brought a present for my brother. He remembered how much my brother loved to draw and color, so he gave him some art supplies. All of us were amazed that Santa not only remembered our group every year, but that he took the time to bring my brother a special early Christmas present. The next year, my brother (with my parents) brought a gift for Santa, and so began the annual exchanging of presents between him and Santa at our annual brunch. Even as my brother became a teenager, he still looked forward to talking to Santa at our annual brunch and exchanging presents. In turn, Santa watched with pride as my brother grew from an adorable little boy to a young man in college.

This year was no different--Santa came to our table and visited all of the little ones, then brought out a special present for my brother. However, this year as he brought out the gift, he whispered that this would be his last year at Tippecanoe Place. My brother gave Santa his last gift, a red and black scarf, and told him about his sophomore year in college. Santa then told my brother, with my mom helping to interpret, how much he looked forward to seeing him and our family each year and how honored he was to be able to watch him grow up. My mom cried as she signed and both Santa and my brother had tears in their eyes as they said good-bye.

Later, away from the little ones, we found out that the kind man who had played Santa all these years was a third grade teacher. He is retiring at the end of this school year and going to live with his wife at their vacation home. Next year somone else will serve as Santa and our little ones will grow up only knowing him. For the grown ups, though, the real Santa retired this year.

It's been awhile since I've posted anything, so here is my life over the past month, via bullet points (because I'm extremely wordy and bullets help make me more concise ... sometimes):

• My husband is home and has no plans in the immediate future to travel again for work. He is working a lot lately, though, as is the case for most people in retail this time of year.
• Halloween was a blast. We carved pumpkins, the little guy was the cutest elephant ever, and I got to take him trick-or-treating for the first time.
• I had another round of meetings in Chicago for work. The days were long and hectic, as usual, but the last day ended with an early holiday lunch for the office at a fancy restaurant, which was fun.
• We finally bought a car that allows someone to sit in front of the little guy's car seat without forcing their knees into their chin. It's shiny and pretty and we love it. The little guy enjoyed checking out all the new buttons as well.
• I realized that neither of my goals for the summer--potty training and moving the little guy into a twin bed--were accomplished. We're still working on the potty training, though, and we have a twin bed frame waiting for a mattress.
• I booked a trip to NYC for my dear friend's bachelorette party. It should be a blast, but it will also be the first time I'm leaving the little guy overnight in more than a year. The mommy guilt has kicked in a little bit.

As for the rest of this week, I'm hoping to rearrange some things in the garage so I can dig out our Christmas decorations. I started decorating the day after Thanksgiving last year and I'm hoping to make it a tradition. And of course there's Thanksgiving. I'm a pretty lucky lady this year--I have a wonderful husband and son and I get to work from home so I can spend as much time with them as possible. Even on the days when the little guy is throwing things out of drawers and D is working from sunrise to sunset, it's a pretty good life.

As I mentioned in my last post, D is working away from home during the week for the next four weeks. So the little guy and I packed up and hit the road to go visit D for a couple of days. All I needed was my trusty laptop so I could work while the little guy napped. The Internet connection was a little spotty, but it worked well enough.

Watching the little guy gently offer our crazy beagle an animal cracker.

Reruns of Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman (what can I say, there's a dorky girl inside this woman).

My husband getting home in time for dinner.

The little guy running up to the door yelling "Dada!" the second he hears my husband's footsteps on the porch.

Singing along with Britney Spears in the car (judge all you want, but I bet you've at least hummed along to "Toxic" once).

The little guy still giving me a kiss and hug whenever I want.

It may not always be an exciting life, but the little things make it worthwhile.

Veering off the work-at-home topic for a moment here. This weekend there was a bit of a scare with my dad involving a trip to the ER and an overnight hospital stay. It turns out it was more than likely just a bad combination of heat, dehydration and doing too much in too little time, but it still has me feeling kind of shaky.

When my mom called and said that my dad was on his way to the hospital, I immediately thought it had something to do with his heart. When she explained why he was going to the hospital, and it sounded like it could be something to do with his heart, I lost it. My dad has had heart problems since I was in fifth grade, which was when he ended up having triple bypass surgery. He's had some problems since then, including a scare a couple years ago. So when I hung up with my mom, not knowing if my dad had had a heart attack or was about to, I started sobbing. I hugged the little guy as close as he would let me and just bawled. I tried to compose myself as I called my husband at work, telling myself I could get through telling him the basics of what was going on without becoming incomprehensible. I got through "My dad is on his way to the hospital ..." before becoming a blubbering mess. He raced home, got his mom to watch the little guy, and drove me to the ER to be with my dad.

Even now, with all test results coming back fine and my dad safely at home, I can't quite relax. I haven't slept well and I keep looking at my phone to make sure I haven't missed any calls. I think when you almost lose a parent as a child (and maybe it never was quite that bad, but when you're 10 and your dad has open heart surgery, that's what it feels like), you start to become panicked about losing them for real. As a kid you kind of think your parents are going to live forever, so when something happens that makes it painfully obvious that they are in fact human, you're never really the same again. I don't think I would fly into a panic quite so fast at any mention of my dad going to the hospital if his heart attack had happened five years ago instead of 17. Depending on how old your parents are and who you've lost in your life, I think you start to realize in your 20s that at some point your parents aren't going to be around any longer. It's a horrible thought, but one everyone has to accept to some degree. When you're made to face that as a child, it's almost as if you go back to that age when it all first happened every time there's another health scare.

I know the panic in my chest will subside with time and sleep will start to come easier at night. I just hope I don't feel like I'm 10-years-old again for a very long time.

Yesterday, for the first time in months, I was home alone. Well, I had the dog with me, but I was the only human in the house. When I worked in an office near home, I would occasionally run home at lunch to throw in a load of laundry or grab something to eat, but I was only there for 30 minutes at the most. Yesterday I was home by myself for more than three hours. That is definitely the longest I have been alone since the little guy was born two years ago.

My husband was at work and my mom had offered to watch the little guy so I could get some work done. Even though he was asleep most of the time he was with my mom, I still felt guilty coming back to the house alone. My brain knew I was coming home to work, but it didn't feel like that when I walked in the door. I don't have an office, so working involves me sitting on the couch with my laptop, which is what I'm doing right now and the little guy is playing on the floor next to me. Because I wasn't going to work, I was going home to work, I felt like I was abandoning the little guy in a way. Between the guilt and the overall feelings of weirdness, I didn't get as much accomplished as I should have.

Since my mom is a teacher and she's off for the summer, she'll be watching the little guy about once a week with the hopes that I can cram in a bunch of work in one day and then have more time to do other things the rest of the week. Next time I'll probably be home alone all day. Here's hoping I can get over the guilt and the weirdness and actually be productive.

I had a conference call I had to be on this morning and was a little worried about how it would go with the little guy running around the house. The true test of a work-at-home situation. If the little guy made any noises, not only could they be broadcast to everyone calling in to the meeting, but would also be heard by a conference room full of people via speaker phone. Thank God for a mute button on the iPhone that turns off the phone's microphone while on a call. Using this plus the speaker phone worked fairly well. My husband was also home, so he occupied the little guy as best he could. There was a scary moment, though, when I was going to have to speak and the little guy was making all sorts of noises playing with a flashlight. I had to run across the house, pray that he didn't pitch a fit over me leaving the room, quickly take the phone off mute so I could say what I needed to say, then immediately put it back on mute. Thankfully he didn't start screaming, because with our house, I could be on one end, my husband could take the little guy into a closed room, and there's a good chance his screams could still be heard on my phone. He's really well-behaved for the most part, but I think we're going to have to work on what "quiet" means.

Next week I'm actually going to be going to a meeting, so I'll be working out of the house for a whole day. Now that I'm starting to get used to the whole working-from-home set up and don't feel like I'm just taking time off, I wonder if it's now going to feel weird to be gone for a day. I'll actually have to set my alarm and put on real clothes!

Going back to the iPhone, it's a big day in this house because today is the release of the newest operating system for the iPhone. While most people are excited about the multitasking feature, my husband and I are most looking forward to the new app organization feature. Supposedly you'll be able to organize your apps into folders (I say supposedly because I haven't downloaded the update yet and my husband is currently in the middle of it), which you can then lock if you want. This means that the little guy can play with our iPhones, but we can lock away everything except the games we want him to play. No more deleted apps, no more settings getting switched, no more photos and videos ending up in the garbage. No matter how closely we watch him when he's playing with one of our iPhones, he's just too fast to prevent all the damage and he's so tall and sneaky it's hard to keep the phones away from him entirely.

Although journalism lends itself to many different careers, I knew I'd be the person who always had a regular full-time job. My journalism professors in college told tales of their adventures in freelancing, traveling across the country to research articles, writing for different publications all the time and never really knowing when to expect their next paycheck. No thank you. There was a reason these seasoned journalists turned to teaching--although they received wonderful clips and bylines, full-time freelancing also left them with multiple broken marriages, empty bank accounts and serious nicotine addictions. That was the life I saw ahead of me if I chose to go the freelance route, and that wasn't for me. I wanted to get married, buy a house, have a family and then actually spend time with that family. All of that required a regular paycheck, health insurance and a reliable schedule, none of which were offered with freelancing.

So how did I end up here? Well, after five years of regular office jobs post-college, I took the plunge to become a full-time work at home mom (WAHM). I left a magazine job I loved because the commute left me with barely any time to see my (at the time) 5-month-old son outside of the weekends. That wasn't the type of mom I ever wanted to be. Thanks to the economy, I was left with no other options but to take a non-journalism office job near my home. The schedule was great, the commute was a wonderful 10 minutes, the pay was OK, but my degree was being wasted. So I went down to part-time at the office and found a part-time communications job that allowed me to work from home. Just a couple of weeks ago, I left the office job and now work completely from home, doing both the communications position I already had and additional freelance writing.

This blog will be part mommy blog, part working-at-home blog, part what-was-I-thinking blog. The lack of a consistent paycheck already scares me and trying to balance the mommy stuff with the work stuff has been hard. I plan to hash all of that out here, too. To all you SAHMs reading, help me keep my sanity as I spend most of my days with a 2-year-old as my only company. To those who are reading who also work at home (kids or no kids), help me calm down about the money part and figure out how to actually get some work, and not just housework, done at home. Hopefully I'll provide some entertainment and maybe offer some "here's what I did and it was great/it backfired spectacularly" advice.