Christmas in NYC

The boys are home. The apartment is cozy. We spent Christmas at home.

The boys welcomed Jo to the family with special gifts. Ethan gave her a calendar with photos of the four of us throughout the year. Samuel gave her a children's book about families.

We decided to venture out that evening to see if anyone else was in the city. Apparently everyone was in Times Square. We had BBQ at Vrigil's, followed by bowling and arcade games at Bowlmor.

Jo and I are signed up for tonight's Midnight Run in Central Park, to kick off 2019.

Happy New Year!

Holiday newsletter

This year's theme is "Surfer Girl," and it's dedicated to the most beautiful girl on the beach.

See the newsletter at TarpStreetJournal.com.

Cleaning out the boys' bedroom

Nice weekend

I took my hot new wife to a holiday party on Friday night. She is soooo beautiful.

Ethan was the coat checker (hired earlier in the week). I forgot to take a pic of him, but he looked good too, only slightly less good-looking than Jo.

Saturday evening we had dinner at a Chinese restaurant in Queens with Jo's cousin and family.

Heaven is watching a 3-year-old eat noodles.

The boys stayed up past their bedtime so we could tell them goodnight. Goodnight tired boys.

Tonight we feasted on Shake Shack amidst Jo's new holiday table decor.

Then Jo and I (along with Bailey and a few neighbors) helped decorate the Christmas tree in our lobby.

Book update

Three Grumpy Trucks has been in the top 10K books on Amazon since the beginning of November, which is a nice surprise.

There have been several days in which both Three Grumpy Trucks and Beep! Beep! Go to Sleep! have been in the top 20K. I don't think that's happened to me before. Beep! Beep! is three years old at this point--it has had (and continues to have) a great run. 

An Italian version of How to Become a Knight is in the works, as is a Chinese version of Three Grumpy Trucks. (I'm up to three languages: a Chinese version of Ten Tiny Toes and a German version of My Grandma's a Ninja are already out.)

Naughty Ninja Takes a Bath is still on track for publication in 2019, and Library Books Are Not for Eating is still on track for 2020. No recent news on either--I'm assuming the illustrators are cranking to hit their deadlines and all is good.

I just submitted a new manuscript to my agent about father and son dinosaurs going on a long journey to find a new home. It's sweet vs. silly. I wrote it on the 15-hour flight home from Taiwan, and I was happy to finish it, because I have not been as productive in 2018 as I intended to be. I think Josephine was starting to grow suspicious.

I'm planning to finish and submit two more manuscripts by the end of the year--from the four or five that are swirling in my head or in various states of revision on my laptop. 

I will tell you that I feel very, very blessed. That is my mantra, and I know I keep repeating it ad nauseam. But I am grateful to be alive, grateful to have people in my life whom I love and who love me, grateful to be able to put food on the table for my family (even if it's Domino's every other night), and grateful to be able to walk into a bookstore, smile and think, "He-he, I wrote that."

Thankful

I'm thankful for many things, but most of all for family.

Babysitting

This will come as no surprise, but can I just tell you how much fun it is to have toddlers in the apartment? Even someone else's?

We colored dinosaur pictures, snacked on yogurt raisins, walked Bailey, took an elevator ride to the second floor, tried to stand on our heads.

Exciting moment of the evening: I got Samuel's old Thomas the Tank Engine trains out of the closet.

I suspect they were asleep within five minutes of leaving the apartment. I suspect they are talking about trains today.

Honeymoon in Taiwan