Sunday morning we all went to West Sacramento’s Raley Field to participate in the Walk Now for Autism Speaks 2010 walk. (According to their website, they raised more than $196,600.) This was my first time at such an event, and we were all surprised at the turnout. We met up with some of Ian’s coworkers and walked from the baseball field to the Capitol and back.

We saw Stormtroopers and sat in Hercules’ lap, enjoyed beautiful Capitol Mall without traffic, and got to walk on the Tower Bridge. The weather was warm and pretty, people were friendly, and the kids got lollies. I’m so impressed with their stamina! Asher was carried a bit on the way back, but they both participated (almost) without complaint.

Afterward, we celebrated with burgers and fries at Rubicon brewpub. I have to say, Rubicon’s black and bleu burger packs a wallop, but the organic pomegranate cider helped. We came home and napped in the afternoon. Just right.

Inspired by SouleMama {this moment} – A Friday ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

We took a little nature walk last Sunday, after we were reunited. The boys had spend the night before at Grandma’s and Papa’s house and it seemed like a little quality time outdoors would be just the right thing.

Moments like these fill up my heart. In the future, when we’re having disagreements or struggles, I hope that such photos will remind us how much love we have always shared.

We were lucky to come across this handsome young buck.

My eyes were peeled for signs of autumn, which I found in yellowing oak leaves and blue-gray October skies. This was an industrious woodpecker!

Most things are dry and gone to seed; this yellow flower is being watered at the Nature Center.

Love this turkey hen’s bright red wattle.

Yellow leaves, yellow grasses, yellow flowers, and a yellow fungus.

This little doe crossed the path behind us. We got a great look at her as she leaped away.

Other hikers had told us of a big rattlesnake on the trail and three of us tried hard to find it. Asher thought that was a terrible idea. We never saw the snake, but found this great discarded snake skin.

So many beautiful sights to see! More on my Flickr.

Even though we were hungry when we finished, I think our walk was a huge success.

Once again, our beautiful school celebrated Michaelmas with a beautiful festival on Friday. Ian and I both got to attend, as did many from our school community. It was inspiring and awesome.

The twelfth grade put on a play about doing the right thing and facing down evil.

Here are our vibrant third graders, who played joyful villagers and performed a country dance.

There’s my darling son in blue, dancing with a lovely classmate! All is well, until a terrible sound shakes the whole village. What evil thing could it be?

A dragon! This fearsome, three-headed beast was created by the sixth grade and their talented teacher and parents. The entire sixth grade class is manning this huge puppet.

Run villagers!

Here comes the dragon! Heroic St. George meets it on the field.

The second graders, wearing their tunics with the cross of St. George and carrying their golden swords of righteousness, subdued the great creature with some help from the brave seniors. The people and the village are saved!

Here is St. George with the tamed dragon. The people have transmuted the forces of darkness with their courage, their champion, and the inspiration of Michael.

(My first wet-on-wet watercolor painting in … many years!)

It’s Friday and our son’s school is celebrating Michaelmas today with a festival and dragon play. Lucas’s third-grade class will be the village children and will do a country dance. Tonight our family will have a modest celebratory meal with dragon bread.

This festival is speaking to me more each year. We all face our own demons every day. We strive to subdue or conquer them so we may shine our inner light into our own lives and the lives of those we love. And the world is a brighter place for it.

Saint Michael’s Harvest Song

In autumn Saint Michael with sword and with shield
Passes over meadow and orchard and field.
He’s on the path to battle ‘gainst darkness and strife.
He is the heavenly warrior, protector of life.

The harvest let us gather with Michael’s aid;
The light he sheddeth fails not, nor does it fade.
And when the corn is cut and meadows are bare
We’ll don Saint Michael’s armor and onward will fare.

We are Saint Michael’s warriors with strong heart and mind,
We forge our way through darkness Saint Michael to find.
And there he stands in glory; Saint Michael we pray,
Lead us into battle and show us thy way.

—Anonymous

Think wisely,
Speak well,
Stand upright
And St. Michael
Will lead you
from darkness
to Light.

Yesterday afternoon, after school, the boys and I pulled down some Crayola modeling “clay” (in exciting day-glo colors) that we had on hand and sculpted dragons in honor of Michaelmas. We spent a happy 30 to 40 minutes sculpting, with each of us working on our own dragon.

Lucas’s sculpture was ambitious! He sculpted the Archangel Michael battling the dragon within a ring of fire! He is justifiably pleased with the result. He certainly remembered the story well.

Asher got to use a plastic knife! Big fun.

Here is my dragon posing next to Asher’s dragon, which morphed a lot during our crafting, just as you would expect for a 3-year-old. His dragon also got lots of lovely dragon play.

Here is a needle-felted dragon I made last Sunday. I had some time in the company of some of my favorite people in the world and my hands happily worked on this while we were visiting. I think he needs some fiery breath!

Some of my research into Michaelmas has brought me to these lovely resources, which I gladly share. I am actually still debating about whether to cook a Michaelmas meal today or save it for Friday, when our school will celebrate this festival.

Waldorf Library

The Parenting Passageway

Rockin Granola

Rudolf Steiner Archive

Mama Roots Branching Out

Inspired by SouleMama {this moment} – A Friday ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

Happy Equinox! Happy Mabon! Happy Last Day of Summer!

It was a busy day. I had originally planned to celebrate the equinox on the 23rd, but when I looked closer at the exact time of the equinox, I decided it couldn’t wait till tomorrow. (Tomorrow we can celebrate the First Day of Autumn!)

We’ve been watching for signs of Autumn around here. Mama’s been scoping out all the garden plants with a project in mind….

After a quick, $9 trip to the craft store today, we came home with a flat twig wreath base, some floral picks (wooden picks with a small amount of wire on one end), and some green floral twine, which we ended up not using. We wandered around our front and back yards and clipped little snippets off trees and shrubs, including liquidambar leaves (still green), flowering plum leaves (purple), mallow, Chinese elm, Japanese maple (purple and green), redwood sprigs, pittosporum, and lantana berries, heavenly bamboo fruits, rose hips, lavender flowers, and the spiky flowers from some ornamental grass. We also walked up the street a little ways and gathered fallen bits of live oak leaves.

While the vegetable soup was cooking I tried to get the kids interested in making the wreath with me. At first they couldn’t be bothered because they were too busy chasing around the backyard. But after I got the first layer on the wreath base, it caught Lucas’s eye and he came to help me. He did a great job of adding to the wreath, and especially enjoyed using the floral picks to wire items without strong stems into the wreath.

We pulled some deep orange/bronze seed lanterns off our goldenrain tree, plucked a touch of dusty miller, and added some rosemary from our herb patch. We added in a few acorns we had gathered from the neighborhood yesterday. Basically, if it was interesting and sturdy enough to be stabbed into our wreath, we used it. I’m delighted with all the colors our wreath has! I had feared that not enough foliage had begun to turn fall colors yet, and that it would be bland.

Here is the finished wreath, sans baby toes and with a few sticks we had gathered and displayed last spring. Ian helped us hang our equinox wreath above our nature table (which is really the top of our upright piano) in our great room. Since these plants are largely fresh, our wreath will wither and wilt over time. It may begin to fall apart, which in itself will be symbolic of the seasonal changes. I’m interested to see how well or poorly it lasts. I’ve never made one of these before.

Lucas then chopped our “finger salad,” mere raw zucchini rounds into halves, symbolizing that today the day and night are perfectly equal. While he did, Ian asked him math questions, which was fun.

Our backyard equinox table setting (blue plates for night, yellow plates for day, of course). I didn’t take a photo of our yummy vegetable lentil quinoa soup. (I’m no food photographer!) We ate homemade bread and soup and zucchini halves, and talked about what summer things we were thankful for (swimming lessons, swim team, Waldorf summer camp, play dates, our anniversary trip to Seattle, Burning Man—particularly because we came home with four noses, eight eyes, eight ears, 16 limbs, and 80 digits!).

We finished our celebration with pumpkin pie! Asher helped with making the pie crust and Lucas mixed up the filling and helped me roll out the crust.

And now, the holiday is done and I’m beat! Good night, and may the many blessings of the season be yours.

I am not sure how to start except to say I’m kind of flabbergasted. A switch in Lucas’s mind flipped this week; or perhaps someone installed new drivers overnight. I’m pretty sure that now, just about a month before his half birthday, we are seeing the first signs of the 9 year change.

This in itself isn’t unexpected. (We were given a handout by Lucas’s teacher last spring when many of his older classmates were already going through it.)

Nor is the timing particularly surprising now that I think about it further. For me, this time around the autumn equinox is always rife (fetid?) with turmoil and change. I’ve written about this before, particularly in the context of the Waldorf myth of St. Michael, whose festival we’ll be celebrating this year on October 1 at school.

So it’s the time of year to excavate and uncover, to face our dragons and look at life and ourselves with new eyes, to ask ourselves if we like what we see, or if it’s time to take our swords and cut away the elements that are no longer serving us, that keep us from feeling right in the world. These challenges are opportunities, right? They help us grow.

This year I’m reflecting on Lucas’s dragons, for I feel he has his own now. His dreamy innocence is falling off him, little by little. His mind is sharp and becoming more critical by the day. He is now becoming an individual who is finally all the way in the world and looking about. He won’t like everything he sees. He won’t like everything he is.

This change of consciousness during the ninth year is challenging for child and parent alike, I am told. The payoff is that this is how a child naturally separates himself from his parents and develops his own individual character. It’s part of his learning to think critically, make choices, and become his own person—all fantastic stuff!

Admittedly, it is somewhat alarming to hear his brand-new self-loathing: “I hate myself. I’m the dumbest! I shouldn’t even exist!” His criticism should  fall squarely on his parents before too long.

Really, this is just the beginning of a phase that we all have to get through, and who knows what will happen. I would not have guessed that one of his first declarations of independence would be to “challenge himself” to stay awake the whole night last night!

Lucas came to tell us several times (10 p.m., 11:15 p.m.) that he couldn’t sleep. We gently but firmly sent him back to bed with an extra hug and the advice that one cannot fall asleep if one doesn’t still one’s body. We went to sleep. Asher, who is sick and was barking and coughing, woke up around 2:30 needing a drink of water. When I took Asher  back to bed, I realized that Lucas wasn’t in his bed. He wasn’t in Asher’s bed either. (I’m not the sharpest at 2:30 a.m. so I was confused.) Then I started to get scared and went looking through the house for Lucas. I found him asleep in the comfy armchair in the living room. I tried to slow my pounding heart and ultimately decided to leave him asleep in the chair. I went back to bed myself but had trouble going back to sleep. I kept worrying about him, wondering what he had on his mind that had caused his insomnia. What nightmare did he have that drove him from his bed? Oh, we weren’t gentle enough with him when he told us he couldn’t sleep earlier, and he was too afraid of our wrath to come to us when he needed us!

Nope. None of that. This morning he revealed he had deliberately tried to stay awake all night. He had played while the rest of us slept. He had spent a bunch of time finger-knitting a long rope. Ian and I sipped our morning coffee and tried to figure out which part of Lucas’s story was the lie. We told him that he isn’t to do that anymore: When we put him in bed for the night, we expect him to stay there! (I guess I should be glad that he didn’t leave the house!)

Natural consequences are tough. He was TIRED today at school. And bedtime came mighty early tonight.

Thank goodness today has been Sunday. We’re tired from staying up too late last night. We’re feeling a bit drained from all the … well, small challenges that we’re presently facing: expensive car repairs, viruses, rush projects. Even Ian is working this weekend, which isn’t something he has to do too often.

It’s fine. Everything will be all right.

Housework. Sick boys. Freelance work. These are the things that have occupied our time this weekend instead of what we had planned: our annual trip to Mimi’s cabin in Strawberry in the Tahoe forest, to visit her and grandpa. Feverish children changed our plans.

We’re in a bit of a slump, you might say.

However, there were several sweet highlights. Like unexpected visits from friends, who fill up my heart with love and see deep inside me.

Low-key, take-it-easy play and movies to ease the disappointment, sickness, and crabbies. I think Lucas is well enough to return to school tomorrow, which is great because he’s feeling pretty blue and misses his friends.

The delicious mushroom, spinach, onion omelette Ian made me for breakfast.

A few feverish smiles and the wonderful opportunity to climb on Dad.

Some sewing for mama. I got to complete a small knot doll I started a month or more ago. She’s for Asher and I sewed all her clothing, hat, and hair today, using just leftover bits and bobs.

Ian said she looks a bit like a preschool teacher, and Asher immediately named her after his own teacher. So sweet.

I’m trying my hand at a new bread-making method. We’ll see how that turns out…. I also managed to finish a work project today, so that feels good, too.

And as for the rest of today, I’m thinking of snuggles and food and an early bedtime for all.