May I present to you the thoughtful writing of my dear husband, Ian, on answering our son’s question about the death of Osama bin Laden. This is the first time I’ve managed to talk Ian into letting me publish his writing on Love in the Suburbs. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did and welcome him as a guest blogger.

~~~~~~~~~~~

“Dad, who died?”

It’s May 2, 2011, the day after your birthday. We have had an exhausting weekend celebrating your 9th. We’re eating breakfast and the radio is on. Usually I turn it off while we eat but this morning I left it on. Last night’s news is still playing out: NPR with their mix of studious research and golly-gee man-on-the-street reporting. You figured out that someone was dead, and that this was somehow a good thing, and the cognitive dissonance prompted you to ask:

“Dad, who died?”

On September 11, 2001, I was working as a computer tech for an online seller of insurance. It was a job that I wasn’t excited about. What I was excited about was that you were due to be born in May of the following year. We had only recently discovered that your mother was pregnant and we were trying to figure out what that was going to mean to our lives. I got in my car like usual, turned on the radio, the disc jockeys were talking about something that had happened in New York, a fire or some sort of accident. By the time I got to the office they were talking about an attack, possibly missiles. At the office, we watched on TV as the truth was slowly discovered. Four passenger planes had been hijacked and turned into missiles: One slammed into the side of the Pentagon, two slammed into the World Trade Center skyscrapers, and one ditched into a field in Pennsylvania. We were stunned, as we imagined the blood on the airplanes, we saw on TV people leaping to their deaths from the flaming buildings. The office closed early that day, and I was left wondering what sort of world I was bringing children into.

“Dad, who died?”

When you were about 5 years old we brought home a picture book about a fireboat. It started out describing the history of fireboats in Manhattan, but as the city developed, fireboats were retired. In the 1990s, a group of friends restored an old fireboat. “How wonderful!” we said. We identified with the group of friends who enjoyed sharing big projects together—and then we turned a page, and there were the two towers in flame and smoke again. Your mother and I burst into tears; you were mystified. It had been years, but the image of the burning towers overwhelmed us. We recalled the evil perpetrated on our country, but also how that evil had affected our country since. (The book would go on to tell the story of the friends sitting in the harbor for days, pumping water onto the site of the fires. There were many stories of courage and sacrifice that day.)

“Dad, who died?”

When I was a kid Americans did not torture, even in war time. Americans did not gather intelligence on other Americans, and we did not wage preemptive war. As the years after 9/11 unwound we saw exactly how dangerous fear could be. American fear allowed a corrupt and silly President to be manipulated by oil companies into starting a war in Iraq. American soldiers, which is a fancy way of saying, “your neighbors and friends” were risking their lives and dying simply to adjust stock values. As our leadership claimed necessity we saw hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed, no weapons of terror, and vast amounts of American money flow to crooked contractors connected to those same leaders. This led many of us to despair that America as we knew it was over, that we would never again see a free election, we would never see an end to fear and manipulation.

“Dad, who died?”

OK, I know this is stupid, but sometimes when I see ’90s sitcoms set in New York City, like “Friends” or “Seinfeld,” and they show the skyline during a cutscene or credits, and I see those two towers, I cry.

“Dad, who died?”

The object of the terrorist is to convince the population that the State is as horrific as the terrorists say it is. If I can control your fear, I can control you. This is deep mindfuck territory, and it works. Americans gave up so much of who we were because of our fear of what this man and his followers could do. I have never been afraid of terrorism, but I have been regularly frightened by the behavior of fellow Americans. After 9/11, civil discourse and intelligent discussion were derided, and ignorance and jingoism took center stage. When President Obama was elected, the fearful went mad. It is said that a black man must be twice as good as a white man in order to be treated as an equal, and after watching the patience and humor of Barack Obama, I think that is true. People said he was “un-American.” Fools without the wit to meet the man in a substantive debate demanded proof of his citizenship. Whereas a white neighborhood organizer would be congratulated on his dedication to his community, Obama was called Hitler. It was all simply racism, which is just another word for fear.

“Dad, who died?”

Parents are the worst sort of fear mongers. You see, we have these little bits of our hearts running around in the world. We call them children, and people say, “Oh, you are such a good person to have children. I could never have children. I am far too selfish.” That’s just silly. You see, having children is a very selfish act. It is the only way that we can project ourselves into the future. Parents have a very narrow focus: Our children are really all we care about. So when someone threatens our children, our better judgment goes out the window. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the most powerful women in the Republican party constantly point to their fears for their children: Fear is the only card they have to play.

“Dad, who died?”

According to the LA Times: “Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden was born in Saudi Arabia, in 1957, the seventeenth of the 54 children of the founder of the Bin Laden Group, a construction company. His father, Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden, was a Yemeni immigrant … The elder Bin Laden was a devout Muslim, raised in the fundamentalist Wahhabi sect. He had at least eleven wives. Osama was the only child born to Alia Ghanem, a beauty from Syria who preferred Parisian fashions to the veil. As a foreigner, she did not rank high in the family pecking order. Some members of the Bin Laden clan have said her status was so lowly that she was known as “the slave” and her son as “ibn al abida” — “son of the slave.” In 1967, when Osama was about 10, his father was killed in a plane crash. His share of the inheritance reportedly was about $300 million.”

“Dad, who died?”

American students read Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. It’s about race and justice and fear and humility. There is a small episode in the text where the father, much to the surprise of his children, shoots a rabid dog in the street. He doesn’t like to do it, and it brings him no joy; he does not celebrate the destruction of a living creature. But it must be done, a rabid dog cannot wander the street.

“Dad, who died?”

When I was 9 I asked my mother why there were bad people in the world. She told me that people aren’t bad, but that sometimes they don’t get enough love, and that leaves a hole in their heart, and they do bad things in an attempt to fill that hole up. She told me that for some people, being bad was the only way that they could ever be important.

“Dad, who died?”

“… we know that the worst images are those that were unseen to the world. The empty seat at the dinner table. Children who were forced to grow up without their mother or their father. Parents who would never know the feeling of their child’s embrace. Nearly 3,000 citizens taken from us, leaving a gaping hole in our hearts.”

“Dad, who died?”

Today I am looking at your mother over the breakfast plates. How do I answer this question? I start and stop a couple of times. A monster, a rabid dog, a “bad-guy,” a man who, through his cunning and violence, showed us the worst of ourselves. A terrorist, not simply someone who uses violence, but uses violence so that the victims of that violence will become monsters. Here was a man who spent his life developing a worldwide network of hate, just to throw it away on one simple murderous act that ripped the conscience and self-respect out of our nation.

“Dad, who died?”

Well son, no one to worry about. He’s dead and buried in the sea; and it is my fervent hope that as we forget his name, we will remember who we are.

April 29, 2011

Dear Lucas,

It’s practically the eve of your 9th birthday. Tomorrow we will spend much of the day cleaning our home, baking, and decorating to get ready for your birthday party—your first-ever slumber party.  It will be a busy day, and not all fun stuff. Together we will succeed in making the space ready for five of your dear friends.

This year, you have asked for a homemade apple pie instead of a birthday cake. I am surprised by this; somehow it seems too much like me and my preferences for it to be your wish. So often I see our differences and dissimilarities most clearly. But there are moments when I see myself in you, like when you get nervous before a big event and begin to wish you could be elsewhere, or like when you pore over a new book, exploring it with your hands and running its cover against your cheek, or like when you express your outrage when someone acts in a way that hurts you, accidentally or not. All of these characteristics in you remind me of myself.

I have seen you grow so much this year it boggles my mind. (I suppose I say that in every birthday letter I write to you. It is always true.) In the last year, I have seen you learn how to read music (both treble clef and base). I have listened with eager ears as you have learned to play songs on our piano, sometimes struggling, sometimes leaping forward in great ah-ha moments of inspiration. Your fingers are at home on the keys; your ear is better than mine ever was, and you seem to memorize songs after hearing them only a few times. This is both a tremendous asset, and also a liability because you are capable of skating along at times, not having to pay attention to the notes on the page. But I understand. It’s a foreign written language, and it’s so much easier for you just to remember all the sounds. You are getting better at paying attention and focusing on the music. You don’t like to work at it, and yet, when you master the task, it’s clear that you feel very proud of yourself. You have tackled some tough songs this year, including one called “Hogwarts March,” from a Harry Potter movie. I am pleased to see you working hard at piano—I mean, of course I want it to be enjoyable for you. I also want you to learn how to go after something you want, try and try and try, and earn your reward. You have been playing for a year now. You have said at times you want to quit, but then you seem to buckle down and achieve the next goal, which fills you up and readies you for more. I’m not inclined to let you quit because you’re good at it.

Another skill that seems to have ballooned is your reading. This gives your father and me so much joy we’re filled to bursting. You are unlocking the greatest thing ever, word by word, book by book, and you seem to know it. You say, “I’d rather read the book first before I see the movie.” You and your school friends discuss books! You come home with requests because so-and-so said such-and-such book was the greatest book ever. You know what ragged right means. You want books because they’re funny, or a bit creepy, or mysterious, or clever, or long and with sequels. And I am in heaven.

Still, I hold back a bit. I don’t push books on you because my showing too much enthusiasm for a story can ruin it. Secretly, I buy books for you all the time, and store them so that at the perfect moment I can give you one as a special gift, or just a now-you’re-ready-for-this surprise. It makes me feel like Santa Claus, and each time you unwrap one or I pull one off the top shelf, I hold my breath. Will you feel the same draw, the same magic as I do? I long to share this feeling with you, to have this one thing at least tie us together in companionship our whole lives. But even more fervently I wish that you will fall in love again and again with reading.

Reading is a big part of third grade, as are spelling tests. You have been bringing fourteen spelling words home to study most weeks this year. When we all remember to work on them together, you tend to ace the quizzes. I’m finding it’s surprisingly tricky to encourage you to care about whether you do well. Often you do, so that’s great. But not always. So we are all learning to negotiate new concepts of expectation. We parents are learning how to negotiate new concepts of parenting. Because you go to Waldorf school, you haven’t been struggling with homework for years already, for which I am grateful. We are not in the habit of having to work on school tasks at home. See? The spelling words are our mutual training ground. Not only do you have to get into the habit of doing schoolwork, but we have to get into the habit of helping you develop good habits! (That teacher of yours is quite clever.) I admit we have a ways to go in this area. Next year, you will have homework to do regularly.

***

May 1, 2011

You remain, as ever, exceptionally creative. Perhaps the best part of this characteristic is that you aren’t afraid of it. You go with your creative impulses without hesitation. I see this in your engineering of objects, in your drawings and paintings, in your imaginative play. There is nothing too big, too hard, or too wild for you. You also seem to seek out the different path. The Moken Kabong shelter project was a good example. You were tasked to build a human shelter model based the shelter of a genuine people. You were the only child in the class to build a boat shelter. While belonging is important to you, you take your individuality seriously. I really like that about you.

You love dragons and ninjas, secret agents and explorers. You love science perhaps more than anything. You want to be a Mythbuster or a chemist or a doctor when you grow up. Something sciency, no doubt. Sometimes you say you want to be a veterinarian.

You are fond of games now, especially complex ones with many rules. You are becoming a good chess player, playing sometimes with adults. I need to remember that you need opportunities to play games. Since gaming isn’t my favorite way of spending time, I need to hook you up with others who do enjoy games. Fortunately, we have a lot of friends who enjoy such things. And your dad is a great sport about this stuff; he’s always ready for a game of chess or whatever.

You invent plenty of games, too, creating cards with creatures that have magical and elemental powers. You talk of hit points, damage, spells, and +4 strength, +1 armor. The games are not confined to paper, though, for your creatures ride on your shoulders and you can fling them into battle, with sound effects and physical confrontation. Asher is a willing participant in all your fantasy worlds. Since you answer his every question about the game with complete confidence, he is content to play by your rules most of the time. Just don’t tell him he has lost all of his powers! On a recent car ride, you and Asher played a verbal quest game like Dungeons and Dragons—I think you called it Tentacle—where you were the GM and Asher had to make choices in his quest. Sometimes his choice was wise and he was rewarded by leveling up. Other times he was penalized, like when he fought and killed a good luck dragon. I suppose you have played this with your friends at school, but I was amazed at how engrossed the two of you became in the game. You were both thinking on your feet, so to speak, and it was awesome.

You (perhaps with friends) have invented a martial art, formerly called Twidlywinkies but recently redubbed “Hai-ya!” The first iteration of this martial art has been around a year or two, but you’ve recently been training your brother in Hai-ya. You are taking him through the ranks, awarding him new belt colors (playsilks) when he does well. Rainbow belt is the highest achievement, after black belt. There are five styles of Hai-ya, from what I’ve gathered: Dragon, Crane, Tiger, Panda, and Snake, which you conveniently swiped from the Kung Fu Panda movie. You say you are training several school friends, too. You would dearly like to take martial arts classes, and we may be coming to that sometime this year. The discipline you would learn in such a class would do you good, I think.

You enjoy shooting hoops, walking on your stilts, and riding your scooter and your bike. We have been letting you ride around the neighborhood alone a bit. Recently you rode off to the local park for a solo adventure. You love to climb trees and every time we go to pick up Asher from preschool, you shimmy up Ms. Pati’s grapefruit tree. Daddy has seen you climbing up our redwoods in our backyard, which are a bit too little still, I think. Now you can do the monkey bars! (You tried for a long time without success, so this is a big accomplishment.) So far, you aren’t interested in playing organized sports. You lament about not having enough free time, though your time is mostly your own. Filling it with sports practice I think would be odious to you. I wonder if and when you will ask for this, and if it’s our fault that you show so little interest in sports. Have we raised you to be just like us?

Overall, I have to say this last year has been much easier than previous ones. You are not as challenging as you used to be, or perhaps I should say, you aren’t challenging as much of the time. You seem in some ways less spiky than before, and are quick to show affection. You give compliments pretty freely, which is a delight. You often tell me and Dad that we are “the best parents ever.” Usually, when we are frustrated with you, it is because you are frustrated with your brother and are fighting with him. You and Asher provoke each other like crazy. You react to him as if every little thing was the most horrific offense, which naturally feeds the fire. You give him such delicious rewards for bugging you, so he does it as often as possible. We are trying to teach you to disengage, walk away, and ignore it when Asher needles you. I fear your choleric personality is a big obstacle. But siblings fight. Brothers fight. And Asher now is a force to be reckoned with.

But I have to also say how much love and devotion I see in your relationship with your brother. Asher looks to you for leadership, for courage, and for a role model. He would like to do everything you do and tries hard. You two are thick as thieves, as they say, completely intertwined with one another. You are best friends and worst enemies, as the cliché goes. You hate to be apart from one another, long to be together, and yet when you are, there is a maddening pattern of good, beneficial play and then angry bashing. We roller-coaster through our days like this and it drives us bananas. You are like powerful magnets, drawn together and compelled to play out dramatic hurts, betrayals, forgiveness, and camaraderie again and again, from dawn until sleep. It is difficult to live with, but I think it’s good relationship training. You are learning trust, how to negotiate, what consequences come from acting badly toward someone, how to forgive and be forgiven.

Sometimes you ask to have your own room again, and I feel bad that I took over your old bedroom for my office. I know sometimes you would really like to get away from Asher and have some private space. You are coping as best you can: You have claimed three personal “desks” in the house as your private places. You and Asher still sleep together sometimes, though, so it cannot be so bad.

A few months ago, you went through a rough patch and were feeling quite depressed and maudlin. You would sometimes get upset and say things like, “I shouldn’t even exist. I don’t deserve to live.” We tried hard to hold you safe and let you feel all your feelings. This “9-year change” business is hard, and dramatic. You seem to need us to acknowledge your pain, but also to act confidently through it. We don’t spend much time trying to convince you to feel differently, for that way is useless and also gives too much attention to the theatrics. We just hold the space in which you can (safely) suffer and try to show you that the suffering is temporary and that we love you despite it. I don’t know what more is in store for us in this changing stage. You’ve just turned 9, so there may be more pitfalls to negotiate this year. But no matter: We love you always.

I admire the way you make friends, Lucas, and I must say, it seems to me you have made some good ones. Your school buddies are great kids, and you get along well even with those classmates who aren’t your best friends. You are especially good in one-on-one situations to my eye. I’m proud that you are considerate, that you remember your manners, and that you make friends with adults as easily as you make friends with kids. You are warm and open, eager to share your experiences and eager to learn from others. I am proud that my friends like having you along, that they tell me what a fun, clever, ingenious kid you are.

***

May 2, 2011

The party is done now. It was a rollicking good time; “best birthday party ever,” you said. There were balloon fights and stick fights and spy-on-the-parents secret agent games. We watched “Mythbusters,” we ate Daddy’s marvelous hamburgers and you and your friends devoured a whole watermelon in mere minutes.  You and your buddies stayed awake until midnight.

We were all pretty wiped out by the next day, your actual birthday, so we spent a kind of low-key day, enjoying each other’s company, and opening presents from me, Dad, and Asher. You are thrilled that we gave you your own, first pocket knife and have kept it with you every waking hour since then. We expect every stick within a two-block radius to be whittled by you in the coming months. You have already carved for yourself  and your brother new wands, with which to have magical duels. Daddy was certain that you are ready for this; it’s a big responsibility to own and use a knife. We trust that you will take it seriously, and not use it recklessly.

We spent the evening of your birthday at Papa and Grandma Syd’s house. You begged to go swimming—the water was 62 degrees—and we let you. You proudly showed Papa your new pocket knife and he admired it. At the moment you’re enjoying time with VoVo and Aunt Kellie and you’re probably receiving more gifts.

There is no question about it, Lucas. You are beloved. Lucas, you are such a mysterious treasure to me and your dad, and every moment we find ourselves having to stretch and grow alongside you, just to keep up. You are delightful and warm, courageous and sensitive, and oh-so smart. You are our shining sun, our inspiration, and our initiator, for without you we wouldn’t be who we are today. We love you for everything that you are and everything that you are becoming. Happy birthday, my dearest light.

Love,

Mama

Dyeing Easter Eggs is always so much fun. I like the kitchen science aspect of using natural dyes and I love how naturally dyed eggs turn out. I also love the colors of conventionally dyed eggs and so do my kids, so we often end up doing both.

This year, we dyed both store-bought eggs and home eggs (of three colors) from our hens. Some were whole and others were blown. For the natural dyes, we used yellow onion skin (a totally reliable, works-every-time natural dye material), beets (less reliable), and red cabbage (which yields blue eggs instead of red).

Here we have cabbage- and beet-dyed eggs on the left. An onion-skin egg is in the lower right corner, and the green eggs are undyed. That’s how they come out of the chicken! The beet-dyed eggs are a gorgeous mauve at first, but they quickly fade to a grayish pink. I need to find out if there’s a way of fixing the color. In our excitement, we forgot to do the yellow Turmeric dye.

While we were going about the business of dying eggs, we decided to dye some wool, too. Lucas just recently finished his clothing block at Sacramento Waldorf School’s third grade. He learned to spin wool to make yarn, and has it in mind to spin at home. We figured, wouldn’t it be even more fun to spin yarn from wool we dyed ourselves?

Meanwhile, we also used the conventional food dyes on some eggs. Since many of our eggs were blown, we had to hold them down in the dye baths.

Asher thought this whole thing was pretty cool. “It’s SCIENCE!”

Our egg dying kit came with a kind of sponge paint for dramatic effects, and both kids enjoyed doing that, too.

Lucas made a rainbow egg.

And we lucked into this black egg—now we need to market the secret of black Easter eggs to Goth Kids everywhere! It’s not what you might think. This is a green Araucana egg dyed in a purple dye bath. Lucas dubbed it the “Easter Bunny of Doom!”

And this is to be expected. Such glee!

Earth Day is Friday, April 22—tomorrow! Even if this holiday isn’t something you grew up celebrating, you can bet that your kids are aware of it and eager to participate. Over the last few years, we’ve been doing a bit more to honor the ideals of this day and our kids just eat it up. Here are a few ideas from our family to yours.

1. Plant a tree: This is every bit as appropriate on Earth Day as Arbor Day. This year we’re planting a tree for two reasons: My great-aunt Nana passed away last fall, and we will plant a tree in her honor and in honor of Earth Day. We have chosen a beautiful pink dogwood for our back yard.

2. Make a terrarium or a dish garden: I wrote a tutorial about how to make a moss terrarium for Little Acorn Learning’s April Afterschool Enrichment Guide, which is full of amazing activities, recipes, poems, and much more. You can find it here: http://www.littleacornlearning.com/.  Here is an in-progress shot of the dish garden we made yesterday. We used moss we collected on a recent trip to the foothills and wheat grass seeds. Lucas included a spiral of small stones we found in our yard. We are adding beeswax bunnies and Easter eggs to it.

3. Go on a hike, take along a trash bag, and pick up any garbage you may spot along the way. (Kitchen or latex gloves come in handy for this activity.) Recycle those things that you can. Note: don’t let children pick up certain kinds of trash, especially anything that looks like it might be medical waste. Many communities have park or creek cleanup days that need volunteers.

4. Do a science experiment. For young children, seed projects are great because they are fast. Here’s what we did last year. Some of our pumpkin seedlings even survived the transfer out into our summer garden and we harvested pumpkins in the fall from our Earth Day experiment! I don’t know about you, but I love cycles like that.

5. Start a worm farm: All you need is a boxy container (a styrofoam cooler does the trick nicely—I know styrofoam is lame, but it works well for this project), and a container full of red worms from the bait store, or else dig up the worms yourself. Put some normal garden soil into your container, shred some newspaper into small strips, wet it all down, and add your worms. Poke a few holes into the container for air circulation. Then put in your vegetable kitchen scraps daily. Stir once in a while and keep it moist but not wet. Before long you’ll have loads of worms (and worm babies!) and great soil for your garden. (It helps to have a plastic or metal container underneath the whole worm bin, to catch any drippings. These drippings make excellent fertilizer.)

6. Learn about the weather or the water cycle. Check your local parks and recreation department for children’s nature classes or day camps. Try this page of links at The Water Project for science experiments for kids.

7. Read books about caring for the environment with your kids. Last April, I wrote about quite a few children’s books we recommend for Earth Day. Adults can check out the works of Richard Louv, Rachel Carson, David Sobel, Robert Micahel Pyle, and Bernd Heinrich.

8. Start a vegetable garden! Good Friday (also Earth Day this year) is a traditional day for planting seeds and seed potatoes. Lucas is outside preparing his garden plot. We have worked into it our soil full of worm castings  from last’s year’s worm farm. That should give our garden a good start!

9. Make space in your yard for wild creatures: add a birdbath, places wild creatures can use for cover, and plants that attract bees, butterflies, and birds. This spring I’ve seen birds actually bathing in and drinking from my birdbath. It was very cool!

10. Take your recyclables in and redeem them for cash; donate your family’s proceeds to a charity such as NRDC or National Wildlife Federation, or any number of other worthy charities. Better yet, if you can support wildlife and habitat restoration efforts in your own community, do that.

That’s 10. I bet you can think of dozens more. If you have a nifty idea to share, please do so! Happy Earth Day!

Home-raised eggs have yolks that are huge, bright, and orange. Those are commercial eggs on the left and bottom.

I’ve been meaning to share this picture book for weeks now. The Stars Will Still Shine  is by Cynthia Rylant, a powerhouse of a children’s author. Pretty much everything she writes turns to gold and her credentials are impressive, to say the least. This simple book reminds us that even as things change, they still stay the same, a reassuring message that even I need to hear once in a while.

Tiphanie Beeke is the illustrator and I think her watercolor paintings are sublime, full of a dreamy sweetness and plenty of lush color.

The words and images are simple. The good things in life are celebrated in this book—ice cream, cuddly pets, swinging on the swing.

Family gathered around a table, playing with friends, flying kites, birds flying in the sky, seasons changing—these are the essential experiences of children everywhere. Any child, from baby to first grader, will easily relate. Furthermore, I would fully recommend this book for any child who is feeling stressed, grieving, or going through a difficult transition.

“The sky will still be there, the stars will still shine …

birds will fly over us, church bells will chime.”

Happy Valentine’s Day from our family to yours!

May you be filled with the love that surrounds you, take it into yourself, and let it inspire you.

May you love deeply and truly, with honesty, courage, and compassion.

May you enjoy life, take big bites, and savor small pleasures and everyday delights.

May you see and appreciate the beauty in the world and in people everywhere.

May you cultivate your creativity and capacity to love, for whomever you love, every day.

Blessed be!

We have a class set of valentines to make this weekend for third grade, in addition to a big school project. (Lucas has to build a traditional shelter diorama and write a report—his first major homework assignment ever.) We have opted to make some kitchen valentines for his classmates this year. I’ll tell you about those after we’ve made them. This is what we did last year and it was super fun.

In the meantime, Asher and I had some fun painting coffee filters with watercolor paints (above). The filters really soak up the paint, and the hearts are equally beautiful on both sides. We haven’t decided exactly how to use these yet: window decorations, cards, mobiles … there are so many possibilities! I spent a few moments the other day hacking up a shiny red gift bag into hearts. You can never really have too many of these, just in case.

At preschool, Asher and his classmates have been making valentines for a couple of weeks now. It’s hard work for a 3- or 4-year-old to make enough valentines for all of his friends!

This Valentine Tree is on the third grade nature table at Lucas’s school. The hanging hearts are all made by the students from modeling beeswax.

I still want to come up with some kind of gift for the children, as I do every year. We always have a small breakfast-time celebration on holidays and I like having a wee something to surprise them with. I have loads of paper hearts that I keep year to year, and one thing I always do is to make a pathway of paper hearts leading from their bedroom door to the holiday breakfast table.

Just might have to make these again! How do you celebrate Valentine’s Day with your family?

These are photos leading up to Asher’s birthday party. It was his very first party with friends. He asked for a “Jungle Dragon theme,” after I offered him a choice of “jungle theme” or “dragon theme.” Well, how can you refuse a kid so cute, when he’s so clear about what he wants? I have to admit, Jungle Dragon kind of threw me off for a while. It took a long time to wrap my mind around what we were going to do, and I’ll tell ya, the party stores and dollar stores were no help at all in the theme department.

We had some birthday bunting I sewed last year to use for decorations. Otherwise, we had to get creative. Ultimately, I decided to let the children be the dragons; we just had to create their jungle.

Lucas and I used nearly all of my green file folders to cut out giant and little jungle leaves. We had a light green cardstock on hand, too, so that became leaves as well.

Those Christmas lights are almost always up, so we hung jungle leaves on the wires, and used green crepe paper to create jungle vines with leaves.

Our dear friend Headra offered to stay over and help us get ready for the party. She was awesome and helped with everything from errand running to decorations. Thank you, Headra! With Ian and Headra both working, I was able to focus on the cake, but more about that below.

Lucas did a marvelous job of drawing dragons on all the goodie bags for our wee dragon guests. I purchased little Aladdin-style dress-up slippers, bubbles, and these Mardi Gras (dragon!) masks for Asher’s friends to take home. Four-year-olds love to dress up.

This is the jungle (like fruits, get it?) decoration above the kitchen table, where the children ate jungle pizza and veggies for lunch.

From play silks, I rigged up dragon wings and tail for Asher, and offered play silks to each kid, in case she or he wanted to be a dragon. Two did, two didn’t.

Asher enjoyed his dragon costume before the party started, which was great because he played dragon while we worked on the last minute touches. The costume came off partway through the party.

Ian brought out our Cryolan face paints and painted some dragon tattoos on Lucas and Asher. This was the last thing the three of them did before the guests started arriving, and it was kind of wonderful to see them sit down together to do this quiet activity before all the people came. (Ian, my love, thank you for this little moment you created—all the cleaning and everything!)

We baked chocolate cupcakes and set out three colors of frosting and a bunch of different sprinkles for the children to decorate their cupcakes. It took a little while for them to realize they could put that gloopy, sugary stuff on themselves, but eventually a couple of them started and the rest followed. Asher kept saying, “Mama, you make me a rainbow one.” Once the other kids were decorating their cupcakes, Asher deigned to frost his own. We stuck four candles in Asher’s cupcake and sang “Happy Birthday” to him. The little rascal blew out his candles before we got to the end of the song!

Here’s S Dragon and Asher Dragon. Aren’t they mighty?

Mostly the kiddos wanted to run about and play. So the other activity I had planned (or rather, held in reserve) wasn’t needed after all. Sitting at the table through lunch was hard enough for the children. They needed a run-about break in between lunch and cupcakes, even. So the playdough dragons we were going to make would have meant too, too much sitting.

After the kid party wrapped up, I was free to finish the dragon cake for that night’s family party. We had the grandparents, aunt, and uncles over for dinner and cake. Asher wanted a blue dragon, so that’s what he got!

I’m really happy with how this cake turned out. I used a bunt pan to bake a ring of chocolate cake, then cut it in half to make the S. I also used the leftover cupcake batter to bake an extra square cake, which I cut into sections to create legs, head, and tail. I used candy from the per-pound bins at the supermarket to decorate. The back ridge and the wings are fruit roll-ups (fruit leather made from almost no fruit). Again, special thanks go to Headra for finding several other awesome fruit roll-up products that didn’t have writing embedded in the candy, as the first ones I bought had.

Asher was thrilled to have his school friends over at his house. He enjoyed telling us he was the Birthday Boy. The most amazing thing about this day was how Asher handled it all. I was sure we would see at least one meltdown. It never happened. He was basically cheerful and good-natured the whole time. He accepted the attention he received joyfully. He was a good friend to his buddies and pretty gracious to his family members. We were so very proud of him … we even gave him the dragon’s head to eat!

We held a small ceremony last night to celebrate Imbolc, or Candlemas. It was just the four of us and it was perfect, I think. In my research, Imbolc and Candlemas led me to Saint Brigid, who led me to Brigid, the Celtic triple goddess, who whispered in my ear how very alike she is to Hestia, the Greek goddess of hearth and home. Now, Hestia and I go way back, and at that moment I was instantly comfortable, on familiar turf,  “at home.” I can work with this!

When I create a ceremony or celebration, I have this little tendency to go overboard. When the intention is to celebrate with my small children, I have learned that the key  is to keep it simple. I usually let my imagination run wild for a while, come up with lots of complicated and meaningful ideas, and then I consciously scale it back, make it shorter, and let the symbols speak for themselves.

After dinner, we sat by the fire on our sheepskin rug. I had purchased a 3-inch beeswax pillar candle and we softened some modeling beeswax in warm water. We each fashioned a design or symbol to attach to our “FamilyCandle.” As we did so, I shared a poem about Candlemas Day.

“If Candlemas Day be fair and bright, Winter will take another flight. If Candlemas Day be cloud and rain, Winter is gone and will not come again.”

Then this, which I wrote:

“Round the hearth, with our fire burning bright, we speak from our hearts. With kind words we kindle our hearts’ light.”

We then talked about Imbolc being the midpoint of winter and that after that night, we’d be moving toward the spring. We talked about family and home.

The boys mostly played with the colorful wax and stuck chunks of it on our Family Candle. Asher called his chunk of blue the “rainbow bridge.” Daddy made a beautiful interlocking rings design, with four rings representing the four of us. I made a star with a rainbow and a little blazing fire (because stars and fires mean winter to me, and a rainbow gives me hope for the spring).

Here is our Family Candle in this morning’s light.

Here you can see the boys’ additions to it.

While we modeled our beeswax and added it to our candle, we thought of with words that mean “family” and “home” to us, things we associate with our home and being a family together. We wrote these words in crayon on a watercolor painting I made earlier in the day. Lucas wrote words for himself. Not to be outdone by his older brother, Asher followed suit, with his own version of writing.

Here is our family artwork hanging above our kitchen table. Love, peace, joy, family, us, tribe, prosperity, health, warmth, luck(e), respect, happiness, hope, laughter, help, rest, safety, boys, hearth—and contributions from Asher, such as “squirrel family in the snow!”

Especially for 4-year-old Asher, we did a small motion play from A Child’s Seasonal Treasury by Betty Jones called Groundhog Day.

Bears hug in their caves so snug.    (Hug self with eyes closed; smile.)

Squirrels are restless in their hollow tree.    (Make a hole with one hand, wiggle fingers of other hand through hole.)

Fox family yawns and stretches in their lair.    (Yawn and stretch limbs.)

Groundhog pokes his head from the ground.    (Make large ring with arms and poke head through.)

Whiffs and sniffs and looks around.    (Sniff, look around through hole.)

Will or won’t his shadow be found?     (Nod “yes,” then “no,” shrug shoulders.)

If it is, we all will know     (Nod “yes” and rise to squat position.)

Spring is getting ready to go!     (Spring up in place with outstretched limbs.)

Finally, while we all held our decorated Family Candle together, we finished with this verse by Marsha Johnson.

Bless this candle in our hands.

Bless this flame as here we stand.

Bless the faces ’round this light.

Bless all people on this night.

We’ll be burning this Family Candle during dinner and on weekends when we are home for the rest of winter.