Mine include going through that stack of magazines on the desk and cleaning out my purse (down to the crumbs and gooey things I didn't know were in there.) I also make a list of New Year's resolutions that pertain to me (lose weight, be more cheerful, don't yell at kids) but these get sidetracked soon after the second encore presentation of the Rose Parade.

            Enter Robert Mahar, self-appointed grand poobah of the Junior Society, of which I am a proud member. The society is "dedicated to the proliferation and advancement of better than average kiddie culture and design," which means I get a weekly e-mail on everything from Halloween pumpkins to arts and crafts projects and sales on unique children's items. I love it. (www.juniorsociety.com)

            Mahar, of Los Angeles , is also proprietor of the online shop Mahar Drygoods which offers artisan-created goodies for children and grown-ups who like vintage stuff (count me in). Suffice to say, I'm a Mahar fan, so when he pointed the way recently to a unique campaign, I listened.

            He calls it "pay-it forward/random acts of kindness/secret Santa love."

            Last week marked the second annual World Wide Christmas Toy Drop organized by the Toy Society, am Australian-based group that makes handmade toys and leaves them in public places to be found and given homes by strangers. The project has attracted people from the Netherlands to Greece , Guatemala to Japan .

            Their blog is at www.thetoysociety.blogspot.com.

 "I've become a regular visitor, reading about the various 'toy drops' in places near and far and loving the accounts by those who have discovered and given homes to these toys," Mahar said. "It's such a simple act of kindness and some of the discovery stories are really moving."

Last year, more than 100 toys were made and dropped and the numbers for this year will be out next month. Mahar made his contribution by making a red and white sock elf featured in his shop.

"I left him hanging from the fencing that surrounds a child development center playground in my neighborhood," he said. "The Toy Society has downloadable labels that read simply, 'Take me home, I'm yours!'  and a letter that explains the project and encourage the finders to report back  and let them know the toy has been claimed."

Mahar said people are so ingenious and thoughtful, "not only in the creation of these handmade toys but in their drop locations - everywhere from the safety seat of a frozen shopping cart to the toy hanging out in the manger of a nativity diorama. I can't tell you how much I love this idea."

Me too.

These adorable clothespin dolls will be our first contribution to the toy drop. Seriously, I can see myself making a whole army of clothespin dolls using scraps from favorite outfits that have been stained or worn, but I digress. 

In his capacity as Grand Poobah, Mahar also offers craft tutorials on Junior Society (http://www.juniorsociety.com/category/arts-and-crafts/). Another great site he recommends is the Crafty Crow (http://belladia.typepad.com/crafty_crow/), a compendium of kids' crafts from across the Web.

For those utterly hopeless at crafting, Mahar suggests Operation Nice, (http://www.operationnice.com/) a similar type project where participants
leave kind notes for strangers to find, or Book Crossing
(http://www.bookcrossing.com/) where participants extend the active life
of their books by sharing them with strangers.

Giving to the greater good in this season of good tidings and cheer.

            Not at me, but she smiled, a quick, sweet upturn of her mouth, bow-shaped little lips slightly open, lifting her chubby cheeks every so slightly, streaked with milky drool.

            Baby No. 3 is only six weeks old, but I swear she smiled at her Papa 21 days after her birth day. She had just been fed (by me) and changed (by me), when I handed her over to Hubby so I could wash my hands. Hubby had just launched into his patented up-down-bouncy-dance-of-sleep when I looked over and saw it.

            She was looking up at him adoringly with her wide, almond-shaped eyes as he spoke in singsong to her. Then she smiled, the look filling her face, her two hands clasped under her chin.

            Hubby and I saw it. And though I didn't run to get the baby book so I could document the milestone like I did with Firstborn Son, we remember. (Hubby reminds me both boys smiled at him first, too.)

            Now Baby smiles with increasing regularity (but never slow enough so I can catch it with the camera.) She does it most after a feeding, when she's just drifting off to sleep. She'll turn her head to one side, eyes drooping, eyes fluttering open, then closing again, then opening one more time before she sinks slowly into sleep, usually with one hand curled ladylike beside her cheek.

            The smile comes soon after that, like a door's been opened in her sleep and she's happy to enter it. Who's greeting her at the threshold? I always wonder. Sometimes, the smile is followed by a golden giggle, a sound so sweet I want to play it over and over should I ever get the chance to record it. What's so funny? Could I get in on the secret?

            You can read all about baby smiles during these earliest days being nothing more than an inborn behavior, just a reflex, or (you've heard this one before), "just gas." We're told babies don't really smile at you until they're at least two months old, if then.

            Never mind all that.

Dad never got to meet any of my children, not Firstborn Son, who has the same stubborn curl in his hair as his grandfather; or Wonder Boy, the four-year-old who inherited his grandfather's lethal charm; and certainly not this granddaughter of his, his youngest grandchild, to whom he gave the same oval face shape I don't have. (I am moon-faced, or, as I see it, have a face shaped like a bao bun.)

            I tell my boys they were playing with angels before they were born.

            "I don't remember," they'll say with all seriousness.

            And I used to think my babies rejoined their heavenly playmates in sleep, when they smiled. But these days I like it better to imagine they're getting acquainted with their Grandpa Aning, that he's singing them Neil Diamond songs and telling them stories, that he's marveling along with me about how perfect they are, how amazing, that he's wishing them all the good things I want for them too.

            Baby finally smiled at me yesterday (after, I should note, she bestowed the honor on two of my sisters.) She was awake, and I had just saved her from a double-sided kissfest courtesy of her older brothers.

            But I think I still like her sleep smiles best.

"Whose playing with you, baby?" I ask as she drifts off.

That's when I hold her close, bring her face up next to mine, and whisper, "Say hi to Grandpa for me."

Both sides of the family would then go into Baby Mode, one aunt taking time off from work to stay with boys while Hubby and I were in the hospital, another taking over while everyone else took turns visiting us at the hospital where I would make them sign a proclamation that our baby was the cutest baby in the whole world.

            By the time my due date came and went, and I was still pregnant, I had a feeling this pregnancy was going to throw me for a loop. And how.

            "I don't want to leave her in there even just one more day," my doctor said, listing the reasons post-term babies often suffer complications. "Let's induce you."

            She graciously allowed me time to make arrangements for the boys (and I squeezed in a last minute trip to Target to boot) before Hubby and I drove to Huntington Memorial in Pasadena, confident that we'd done this twice before, excited to meet our little girl.

            "We'll be back in two days," I promised the boys.

            I'd been induced before, so I knew the drill: check in, have an IV put in, and follow that up with increasing amounts of Pitocin, a drug used to induce labor and help it along. Don't forget to ask for your epidural in plenty of time, then just sit back and get ready to have a baby. I had a book and some magazines on hand and Hubby rejoiced that he had WiFi in the labor and delivery room (the better to update his Facebook page.)

            I got my epidural that night, which lasted me well into the morning. I praised the magic elements of the epidural and waited for the next act.

            "You're in a very nice labor pattern," my doctor complimented me, and although I'm sure I had nothing to do with this, I accepted the praise.

            Then everything went wrong: my contractions started getting stronger so I asked for the blessed anesthesiologist to top off my medication. But before it could take effect, my contractions came sharply in mighty peaks, leaving me little time to rest in between.

            "Somethings's wrong," I hissed to Hubby, as I hung on to the bed rails and tried to ride out the pain.

            My doctor agreed. The contractions not only became too powerful, they also didn't pause. Each contraction panicked me and sent Baby's heartbeat plummeting. As I writhed in bed, saying, "Ow-ow-ow-ow-ow," it seemed the room suddenly filled with hospital staff, moving quickly, accompanied by beeping alarms.

            My doctor turned to Hubby and said, "We need to do an emergency C-section. Now."

            He and I had time to exchange one stunned look before I was wheeled away.

            I remember asking why (aside from the baby's distress, doctors were also afraid my placenta was separating from my uterus before our baby.) I remember looking up at the operating room lights and thinking, "This is just like the movies," then bursting into tears at the thought that the doctors won't be able to rescue my baby in time. That was the worse.

I arrived at the operating room at 11:03 p.m. Our baby, Alicia Rivera, all 7 lbs. 3 oz. of her, was born five minutes later.

As I write this, my little girl is sleeping in her hospital bassinet, looking for all the world like a pink-faced pea in a pod. She has her older brother's lips, my ears and her daddy's cheeks. She is fine.

            It wasn't at all the birth story I had planned to tell, but the ending is what matters most. And how was YOUR Labor Day weekend?