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The fund’s sponsor originally wanted to raise $5,000 to help kids get their lunches, just as Castile did in his job as a nutrition services supervisor at a St. Paul school. On the days when I just couldn’t listen to another hour devoted to the stressful news of the day (or week, or month, or year), but I didn’t want to fully disengage, I was glad to have episodes from some of my favorite go-to podcasts to help me process my anxiety (see, Beth became a fierce advocate for more funding for research into MBC, which kills 113 people every day and yet receives only 7 percent of all breast cancer funding. Give to MET UP here and to the memorial fund set up in Beth’s name at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center here.

It’s felt wrong to post lists of good things when such horrible things keep happening – when, in the words of Jimmy Kimmel, it seems like a window to hell has been opened. We started a book club based on the premise of, “let’s get real, a bunch of moms probably aren’t all going to read the same book every month. But the club has given me renewed incentive to find some new books, and my favorite read of the year (The Boston Girl) came on the club’s recommendation. Much of this year has been dominated by health – Teddy’s, on a micro level, and on a more macro/work level, a seemingly never-ending battle to save the Affordable Care Act.

All birthdays are worth celebrating, but this year has had more than its fair share of bumps and bruises (and doctors and nurses) for you, which makes marking this day with cake and candles and maybe even a surprise celebratory call from your Paw Patrol buddies (shh! ) I haven’t written much this year, but I couldn’t let today go by without reflecting on what’s been such a full year, in ways both great and less so. (On the brighter side, you did score a LOT of Minions swag from the nurses, and you learned a mean game of tic-tac-toe while sitting in a lot of waiting rooms. Closer to home, there’s been backyard baseball and a backyard pool and bike riding and scooter riding and so many visits to the playground.

2016 felt often like a year of unending writer’s block. I’m almost certain that that’s more than I’d read in the four previous years combined. But I read only two books in the entire last quarter of the year, when I spent more time falling into (and digging myself back out of) social media rabbit holes than turning pages. It was a time when I arguably needed to pay more attention to the small things I was grateful for every day – because even in a time when so much has felt uncertain and frustrating and scary and infuriating, good things have still been happening – and yet I couldn’t pick up the pen.