Loved this column from Terry Cullen of the Journal. My kids start making their Christmas lists early, too, but I sometimes wonder if it’s because it’s the only time of the year that they can ask for toys and actually expect they’ll receive them (both have winter birthdays, too). Is their winter binge toy consumption like being on a yo-yo diet?

This summer, I came up with the crazy idea that each person in the family could command one week by coming up with eight “rules” for the rest of the family. It came to be known as “So and so’s perfect world.” Topping my list of rules during Nancy’s Perfect World was the simple statement: No TV or computer use (except as necessitated by paying work). You’d think I’d announced that we’d be doing hard labor 14 hours a day. Oh, the moaning. Seven straight days of moaning, and not…