It only took me 12 Christmases to get nostalgic. Just 12.

I was a parent for only 9 days before I spent my first Christmas with you.

You arrived 3 weeks early, on my last day of work. You weren’t supposed to come until January.

I ordered Christmas cards with your picture to announce your birth.

I was in love with being a mother at Christmastime before Santa even made his first stop.

That was (nearly) 13 years ago. 12 Christmases come and gone. Already?

It took 12 Decembers for me to miss your sweet little voice when you sang, “Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle all the reindeer.”

It took 12 ornaments made with your school photo or a handprint to make me sigh wistfully this year as we decorated the tree.

12 holiday seasons for you to learn that once the tree is up- we watch Home Alone, then Elf, then Christmas Vacation, then the Grinch.

12 Christmas Eves of Chinese food and 12 Christmas mornings with bagels and cream cheese.

12 Christmas dinners, several that we hosted at our own table (7 to be exact)

12 trees, 12 filled stockings, 12 letters to Santa by a plateful of cookies.

12 readings of The Night Before Christmas on the couch before bed.

12 early (and I mean, early) mornings with you waiting at the top of the stairs to go down and peek for the first time.

12 Advent calendars, 12 cookie baking Sundays, 12 trips to the Holiday train, or Breakfast with Santa, or some in town light display.

12 days after Christmas in our jammies amid a mess in the living room.

In my 13th Christmas with you, I ache to savor it. To slow it down.

I want every Santa letter, every Christmas carol, every scrap of crumpled wrapping that lay on the living room floor- given back to me.

I want to hold it all in my mind’s scrapbook- so I can turn the pages back and back and back and back- and back.

But my heart can’t hold all of it. It leaks out now and again, sometimes in the corners of my eyes.

In truth, we will have many more Christmas seasons, we will honor the traditions of the first 12 and make new ones in the next 12.

But those first 12, I won’t stop reminding you of them.

I will tell you stories of magic and miracles and flurries of joy.

I will admit that I got a second chance at being a child with you. But this time I got to keep all the surprises, I got to hold all of the stories.

In 12 Christmases, you grew tall enough to put the star on the tree yourself.

You can make your own hot cocoa, you know all of my favorite Christmas songs.

In 12 Christmases, I got 12 installments of you at every age- the small and sweet, the bold and inquisitive, the quick-witted and wise.

In 12 years, however you measure them, Christmas became not something we did but something we *feel*.

Our place to land. Our reset for the year ahead.

In 12 years, we grew tradition, we piled up memories, and we kept on going.

12 Christmases have passed. But our 13th is before us.

And though the magic feels different, the house sounds different, and you both (okay, Mom and Dad too) look different, it will be very much the same as the 12 before.

The metrics of holidays, and love, and memories, and nostalgia are not something I pretend to understand.

But I do know this.

One quiet Christmas morning, there were hoof prints through the snow across the top of our garage.

One December evening the year your Grandpop passed, a nativity scene appeared on our front lawn.

One Christmas Eve, Santa paid a visit to us early before you went to bed.

And the words to Jingle Bells, undoubtedly, should be changed to, “Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle all the reindeer.”