Happy New Year! I don’t know what this means, but I’ve been taught to say it whenever I see someone. Last night during dinner (pork, sauerkraut, and potatoes), Papa asked us what our resolutions were for 2013. Aside from keeping up with her Italian (which she didn’t do yesterday, by the way), Mama said she’d like to help me keep up with my blog. We all agreed that that was a good resolution. After all, I’ve been eating, and Mama’s been teaching me how to make things, since last I reported, and we have all manner of pictures showing me stuffing food into my mouth. We are going to try to catch up, so please excuse us if our content is out of season and I have a different hairstyle.

We will try to do better in 2013.

What happened was a difference of opinion… which resulted in a bad case of writer’s block. Mama thought a post I’d written about her getting dinner done in under half an hour made it sound like she was showing off. I disagreed, since she had cooked dinner in less time than it takes me to put my books back on the shelves. This little setback stymied my creative flow, and I just… well… stopped writing. But not because I didn’t want to! In fact, Mama and I both received e-mails and verbal requests for new topics and posts and ideas, which we duly filed in our collective memory bank, all the while intending that tonight will be the night we start again.

January 2 seems like as good a time as any to start fresh. Tonight was leftovers, so I have no lessons to relay, but seeing as you haven’t seen me for a while, I’ll post a recent picture. Yes, that’s an actual marshmallow that Mama toasted while I was playing with my friends Quinn and Leyna. I thought they were only for camping!

Love, Jude