If I hadn’t been present at Jasper’s birth, and very personally involved in that birth, I’d swear that there was some kind of ‘separated at’ thing going on here:

I’m not even going to remark on the ears. Those ears. THOSE EARS.

We would start calling him Happy, after the Rankin/Bass character that he so resembles, except that he’s not, strictly speaking, always happy, and also we just prefer calling him names like Jibby, Jibbler, Jazzburger, Joey, and, when we’re feeling edgy, Jasser Arafat. So. An opportunity for a new nickname, but one that we, sadly, cannot take.

What I would like to take: that whole part of the story, from ‘Rudolph’s Shiny New Year,’ wherein Father Time explains that it is possible to stop the clock and to freeze time and have it be perpetually now. Because although I am so, so excited for the upcoming year, and although I love watching my children get bigger and older and faster, it all just feels, sometimes, like it’s happening so fast. I wouldn’t mind stopping time for a little while. A day or two or twenty or more, just so that I could stop, and enjoy it all for a little longer.

Of course, if it means banishing an infant to the Archipelago Of Last Years, I can probably live without this. Probably.