We had a little pumpkin carving party last night. It started with an impromptu play date with R. She and Lucas got in my car at the end of the school day and immediately started clamoring to play together. Why not? Luckily, R’s mother said yes!

They obliged me with this sweet photo. Both Lucas and Asher love it when R comes to play!

Meanwhile, I made vegetable soup with all kinds of goodness: butternut squash, leeks, onions, peas, garbanzos, carrots, parsnips, celery, beet greens and rice. I baked bread, too. The house smelled terrific!

Later on, more friends joined us for a potluck and some jack-o’-lantern fun. Anytime Lucas gets to use a knife, he’s happy. (He’s asking when he can have a pocket knife for whittling. Yikes!)

Here he his working on a pumpkin that we grew in our garden!

R’s ghostly pumpkin turned out great. Parnassus helped X out with his.

Asher drew his pumpkin’s face and I carved it for him. Too cute.

The talented Miss T, aka Snow, worked hard to make the grossest jack possible. She’s planning to spill the pumpkin guts out of her jack-o’-lantern’s mouth, as if it’s throwing up. Yuck

Didn’t manage to get everyone in the frame here, but I think you can tell we had some fun. Later the Blooms showed up and we all ate a yummy dinner. Much thanks to Parnassus for the yummy salad, green beans, and pumpkin pies! Frostee got to satisfy a craving for pancakes in honor of her grandfather.

And the Giants won.

We had a marvelous day Saturday at the Sacramento Waldorf School’s Harvest Faire. I was delighted to be asked to shoot photos at the festival. So many amazing and talented people worked tirelessly to pull off this community event and fundraiser. Their dedication and attention to detail is visible in every scene I shot.

Welcome to the Sacramento Waldorf School Harvest Faire!

This is Asher’s dear friend S, who goes to preschool with him. They had such fun in the Kindergarten yard, running and playing follow the leader. We saw two other dear preschool friends there, too. Asher was over the moon!

Asher got to see the puppet play of George and the Dragon, performed in the Kindergarten. It was delightful.

I was so honored to be allowed to take pictures during the puppet show performance. These dedicated women (plus the narrator who is not pictured) are the Kindergarten teachers. They infuse love and light in everything they do.

The Children’s Store was full of inexpensive treasures for the little ones to buy, either for themselves or for their loved ones. Many of the items were handmade.

The Country Store was also full of lovely items, much of them handcrafted. Jams, honey, hats, decorations, toys, games, clothing, artworks, yarns and supplies—you name it. Here’s my Harvest Mother in the foreground, who sold early and for a good price, and the room’s nature table in the background.

The third grade parents offered beeswax candle dipping to Harvest Faire guests. (I got to help with setup on Friday, and Ian did two shifts on Saturday.) Candle dippers walked in a large circle, dipping their candlewicks in warm beeswax and then walking a few paces to let it cool, dipping in cool water, walking a few paces and then repeating. After a while, you have a nice candle that you can decorate. I saw one little girl pressing tiny seed beads into her fresh candle, to make a little mermaid design.

Paints for gourd painting: I’m kind of sorry I didn’t get more shots of this booth, as I’m sure some colorful gourds were made.

There was a whole room dedicated to showing off Waldorf students’ schoolwork. Every grade was represented, including high school subjects like chemistry and humanities.

The vendors were terrific this year and I’m sorry I didn’t have the funds for serious shopping. These carved Halloween gourds are the work of a friend, Miss Katy. They’re boo-tiful.

One booth was decorating a fairy scene. Children could make a little fairy doll and then glue special trinkets like shells, jewels, and tiny pumpkins onto the scene.

Basket of fairy wreaths. You could make your own!

Asher had a wonderful time! He was my little Acorn Boy that day, sporting grandma’s knits.

The ninth grade sold produce from the school farm and other local organic farms—a kind of mini farmers’ market in the Faire.

This is the Festivals Room, which was a display of all the seasons of the year and the various festivals celebrated in Waldorf schools and homes. Some loving volunteers put this together and it was magical.

Autumn scene from the Festivals Room.

Lucas and X got to play tag and be rowdy for a while. These two get along so beautifully. Later, they got to shoot a bow!

There was so much more. I might just indulge in another post.

There are many, many benefits of preschool. I know not everyone will agree with me about this; some parents just love having their little ones at home until they reach Kindergarten age, and more power to them. But as Ian and I both work, we have almost always needed some day care. Preschool has always brought enriching experiences to our children.

In addition to all the great friendships preschoolers build and socialization they acquire by being with small groups of children for some portion of their week, preschool also offers us parents a new perspective on our kids. You know how sometimes it’s hard to see something that you’re around day after day? Well, sometimes it’s hard to notice when kids are ready for something new, something more challenging. Over the years, our kids’ teachers have gently pointed out to us many important growth spurts we might not otherwise have noticed, for example, “Your child is so cooperative when it’s time to clean up the toys.” Really? Sometimes our sons tell us themselves that they’ve grown up a bit more, thanks to the influence of their teachers: “Lucas, it’s not polite to have your elbows on the table.” Manners 102.

The other day I picked up Asher from preschool and saw him swinging on the tree swing in the yard. Imagine that! I had no idea he was ready for the big-boy swing yet because I had stopped noticing the baby swing on our backyard swing set. I didn’t notice him not fitting in it so well anymore. I didn’t notice that he had stopped asking to be pushed on the swing.

Perspective. I got to see Asher in a new light away from home, to see that he can do something altogether new and with gusto.

So we took down the baby swing and put up a low-to-the ground big-boy swing. Wow.

With a Twist …

“We thank you for our day,
We thank you for our friends and family,—”

“—Especially Daddy!”

“Yes. We thank you for each other,—”

“—Especially Daddy!”

“We thank you for our good health,—”

“—Especially Daddy!”

“We thank you for our big, beautiful earth,—”

“—Especially Daddy!”

“And we thank you for our rest.”

“Especially Daddy!”

“Especially Daddy. Blessed be.”

My baby left this morning wearing Ian’s 20-year-old backpack covered in European country patches. It was stuffed with his gear and bigger than him.

“I feel like the tortoise who won the race. No wonder he went slowly!” Lucas said, staggering under its weight.

He’s off with his third-grade class for a first-ever overnight camping trip. They are going to Full Belly Farm, an organic farm in Capay (which must be really close to the farm we went to last weekend). The whole class will be sleeping in tents. It’s going to be awesome.

I am so proud of Lucas. Today, I truly feel that the time does fly by. Wasn’t it only a few months ago that I was holding his hand as we marched for the first time into the Kindergarten?

The anticipation of this class trip was hard on him. Lucas was pretty nervous and asked me more than once, “Do I have to go?” He cried and worried. It’s so hard to find the right balance between being compassionate about his emotional turmoil and being encouraging yet firm. No, I’m not going to let him skip this amazing class trip because he’s afraid of it. He is ready, even if he doesn’t know it yet. Does that make me mean? That’s mothering for you—I’m part Mom, part Sensei.

I just kept telling him how much fun he was going to have, how busy he and his classmates would be, and how it’s OK to feel nervous about things. “You’ll be fine! Lots of people will be there to take care of you,” I told him. I also know that Lucas is a wonderful caregiver, and so we role-played how he would act if he found one of his classmates was having a hard time and feeling sad and homesick. He came up with wonderful strategies for making that friend feel better. I think that made him feel empowered and competent.

I made sure Lucas has both phone numbers so he can call home if he needs to. The teachers said that would be fine. We packed a little lavender-scented pillow I made him for Valentine’s Day; something he can sleep with if he’s feeling homesick.

The worry he has been feeling the last couple of days seemed this morning to have been outstripped by his excitement. He happily trudged out the door—no tears, no bargaining, no hesitation. Just an 8 1/2-year-old boy with places to go and friends to meet.

Courage is being afraid and doing the right thing anyway. This trip seems to me to have just the right degree of challenge, the right ratio of fear to reward. And of course, it has everything to do with their third-grade curriculum, studying gardening and grains.

(These are partial-page scans from his Gardening and Grains lesson book. My scanner isn’t big enough to capture the whole page.)

I love this Waldorf curriculum. I love that my son gets to spend a day and a night on a working farm that is using sustainable practices and raising sheep for wool. I love that he knows where his food comes from. I love that part of school for him is fresh air and sunshine, digging in the mud and planting seeds, and swimming in a pond. I love that his physical and spiritual development are carefully considered in addition to his academic aptitude and achievement; that the health and unity of the class as a whole is considered. I love that he is challenged with tasks that are a trifle scary and difficult, and supported while he faces his fears and overcomes obstacles. I feel he is being nourished every day by these qualities and so many more that I can’t even put into words.

I’m just so full of gratitude, and hoping he has a wonderful time.

You might have gathered that I get kind of excited about seasonal holidays. I love Christmas and Thanksgiving and Easter, of course, but I especially love them within their context of their seasons. When I look at our cultural holidays from the perspective of how the turning of the wheel influenced/influences people’s lives and consciousness, I’m overjoyed to participate. These things hold great meaning for me, much more so than any store gift.

When we became a Waldorf family (which may have been before our first child was born, depending on how you look at it) we quickly adopted the nature table as a means of expressing our appreciation for nature and the changing seasons. OK, maybe it was me more than Ian. But still. It dovetailed so nicely with my own inclination toward nature religions that it was almost automatic. Now that we have Waldorf, I don’t have to go into the awkward conversations about my unconventional spiritual tendencies, I can just say, “It’s a Waldorf nature table,” and be done with it. Of course, nobody ever asks me.

I’m not entirely sure whether the children even notice this seasonal display. Occasionally they will bring in something from outdoors and we will place it on the nature table.  My mushroom family makes its debut on the table this fall.

Spent seed pods from our day lilies, needle-felted gnomes, a knitted cat, a big black rock from the Black Rock desert, rocks Lucas painted, and a decoupaged candle holder that the children made last for last year’s autumn equinox. In the background, we have Daniela Drescher’s In the Land of Elves picture book opened to the autumn page. (Drescher makes gorgeous books, by the way!)

We have on this side wheat and preserved autumn leaves from a craft store, more gnomes, and a cut geode candle holder. Everything rests on gold and orange play silks.

By the way, this is the ONLY clean and beautiful space in my home at present. Chaos reigns around here most of the time.

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.

This little treasure of a book, Astro Bunnies, isn’t fancy, isn’t old, isn’t even hardbound. It’s a Scholastic paperback that I found in a used bookstore and snatched up years ago. We first encountered it when we checked it out from the library when Lucas was small. The author is Christine Loomis, who wrote two other delightful Bunnies books—Coyboy Bunnies (1997) and Scuba Bunnies (2004). The illustrations in Astro Bunnies are by Ora Eitan.

Loomis’s text is lilting and fun; perfect for preschoolers or early readers with an affectionate ear for rhyme. Eitan’s illustrations have a retro-futuristic feel that I find appealing. (I’m sure that kind of style has a name in the art world, but I don’t know what it is.)

My boys love the idea of space travel and the juxtaposition of cuddly white bunnies and astronauts is a successful one. The bunnies put on space suits and go for a space walk, “ride their rockets in slow motion through a silent starry ocean,” and collect data for science. Really, what could be better than that?

Their adventure doesn’t stop there, however. “Then a ship appears in space. Bunnies from another place!” Preschool Lucas used to laugh and laugh at the alien bunnies.

Today, Lucas is home sick and since I had this book on my mind anyway, I asked him to read it to me. When the tables turn like this and he reads to me, it’s simply magical, no matter the stutters or mistakes. His reading skills are developing and he’s now in need of practice, practice, practice. We talked about tricky words (spelling of motion/ocean and dial/smile; sound differences of scouting/touring) and how sometimes you just have to memorize them.

To keep him busy today and help him practice his cursive writing, he is now copying out some words from this book for me—a quick little foray into homeschooling and homework, which is something he is keen to do (for now). It’s a win-win deal, except for the sniffles and fever.