There are some moments when I despair. I look at these two strange beings who bicker and occupy my home, who confuse and frustrate me, and are so different from me, and I wonder if I am having any civilizing influence on them at all.

Then I get sick, like I am now, and they come to me with soft small hands, stroking my skin and hair, bringing me cool wet cloths for my forehead, and rubbing my shoulders. They hold me close, cuddle up next to me, worry about me, and whisper sweet words of comfort.

And I feel their mothering and hear my own words coming back to me. It’s a mirror, and a window to their future selves.

Happy New Year!

For our family this past year has been good overall. We’ve all grown so much, learning joyfully and meeting our challenges with determination and sometimes with grace. We have pursued goals, developed skills, made friends, and found and made new opportunities. We have carved a place for ourselves. We have faced our fears. We have dug deep to find additional strength and resolve. We have unearthed some old psychic muck and purged some baggage that no longer serves us. We have planted seeds of joy and nourished gardens of all kinds. We have bumbled and bumped along, at times, and our experiences have polished us a little bit more. I am repeatedly humbled by our amazing good fortune, most especially in our friends and loved ones. I am constantly amazed by and inspired by the courageous people around us, who serve as our support network and as excellent examples of compassion, understanding, goodness, bravery, and arete. Our boys continue to be our raison d’etre and an endless fountain of love in our lives.

I wish for our family, and for you and yours, fourteen essential blessings in 2014:

1. love
2. good luck/opportunity
3. prosperity
4. good health and stronger bodies
5. creativity
6. learning
7. friendship
8. laughter and whimsy
9. peace in our homes
10. forgiveness of self and others
11. patience
12. perseverance
13. dreaming
14. trust

Blessed Be.

I’ll probably get around to writing a little about our Christmas holiday soon, but for now I want to talk about reassuring little ones when fears surface.

My little almost-7-year-old son asked me last night, as we were cuddling at bedtime, “Mama, put your arms around me. I like it. It makes me feel safe.” Then he paused and said, “How do you keep me safe?”

Such a big question at the end of a full and happy day, from a brave boy who spent his time battling orcs in the woods. Such an important moment for me as a mother. How do I say the right thing—just enough and not too much, before he drops off to sleep? Accounting for context, age, and timing is so important in parenting. My sweet boy was about to slip into dreamland. I knew what he needed to hear.

I waited a beat. And then launched into my quiet answer.

“There are many things and people in your life who are working to keep you safe, sweetheart. Some things we cannot see. Our society has laws that keep our air and water safe to breathe and drink. We have safe foods to eat. We have people who keep our country safe. We have bike helmets, seat belts in the car, and speed limits on the roads.

“Our police and firefighters keep us safe from harm and crime and emergencies. We live in a safe neighborhood. There are good people all around us.

“Mama and Daddy are here to keep you safe. We made this warm, solid home for you to live in. We stay with you and make sure you’re not alone. We lock our doors at night so we are safe while we sleep. We have safety rules. Your brother looks out for you. And you have adults all around you who protect you.

“Our love and care for one another keeps us safe. We are safe together.”

He listened. He sighed. “That’s good, Mama.” And then he fell asleep.

The Sun in Winter

Pale sun goes sailing
Through the frozen sky;
Trees raise to him their arms
As he goes by.
Haste, sun, grow brighter
As the days go past;
Wake from their sleep the buds
And leaves at last.

My day started with a gorgeous trail run with my friend.

The kids played with the neighborhood boys, and just at sunset, Ian got to explain to the kids what the winter solstice is—that the earth’s axis is 23.5 degrees tilted to the plane of her orbit, and thus we have seasons of more sun and less sun, and that after this shortest day, the hours of sunlight each will get longer for the the next six months.

We declined a party invitation with regret, and celebrated at home on Saturday evening. It was quiet. It was cozy.

It was a little dark, just as I wanted it to be. The candlelight was lovely.

We had a meal of Greek avgolemono soup, fruit salad, green spinach salad with little yellow squash suns, and a honey suncake for dessert. Simple and delicious. I had a vision, so the kids and Ian just relaxed while I prepared it. I loved the part when I called them in to eat, and everything was glowing, perfect, and pretty. I only wish the boys had enjoyed the soup more.

And I convinced my darling boys to do some art with me. We painted these pretty sun symbols. Now we can hang them to remind us of how grateful we are for the sun’s warmth and light. They could be Yule or Christmas ornaments, or a kind of mobile. I don’t know yet. But I love them.

And as for our furry friend, Solstice the dog—we celebrated his second anniversary in our home. He got some new treats and a new rope toy. We adore him.

This year, the shortest day of the year comes on a Saturday, so I’m dreaming of a family celebration. Something simple. A special sunny meal. Some art perhaps. A fire in the fireplace. Although we celebrate Christmas in our home, I also have a need for a modest, private, no-fuss solstice night on our terms.

I’m thinking avgolemono soup.

I’m thinking salad with persimmons, mandarins, apples, and pomegranate seeds, with a touch of orange blossom water—but not on Asher’s portion because he thinks it’s gross.

I’m thinking a sunny, honey cake.

I’m thinking of a simple craft we can do together.

We have a second important reason to celebrate the winter solstice. It is the second anniversary of this sweet fellow being in our lives. I realize it might be confusing: My dog is named Solstice because he came to us on the winter solstice two years ago. He was and is the best solstice present ever given to any four people ever.

This week I had Asher home sick for three days. It was a sweet kind of time together, as it forced me to slow down and step away from my work. We read lots of books together (“Read me more about castles, Mama”) and did some Christmas preparations that otherwise probably wouldn’t have been done. For example, I made a long evergreen garland for the eave at my front door.

It’s quite long and pretty, made of fir branches, plus some box, redwood, lemon leaf, and bay accents, and features some simple homemade ornaments: wooden stars, toadstools, spirals. It’s very festive for Yule.

We made the pretty pentacle at the top with Virginia creeper vines that Asher cut and I wove into a wreath. We accented its points with bay leaves polished with a touch of olive oil.

We made wooden star ornaments for teacher gifts and painted them “emperor gold.”

Asher played at being a Sun Warrior. He came up with this outfit on his own, and then asked me to do a photo shoot while he jumped and ran around the backyard with a sword and a “spear.” My little Apollo. We got some great action shots. (Why is it that kids are most sick at night and the morning, when it’s time to go to school, but not very sick at all in the middle of the day?)

We have observed Advent, and Asher has gradually added more and more stone, plant, and animal items to our Advent wreath. (He snuck a Bob the Builder doll in there too.)

We’ve watched Mother Mary progress along her sky path of stars on her way to Christmas Day.

I finally found a way to use some gold colored wire that I salvaged from a school fundraiser auction event several years ago. (Why do I keep this stuff for years? Oh, because occasionally I actually DO something with it.) Anyway, it’s very soft, pliable stuff and I made some sun ornaments from it. They’re not fancy, but are shiny and pretty.

So, that’s what’s going on as we enter into this holy week. Whatever holiday you observe, I hope you can gather your family together, either in body or in spirit, and take some time to reflect on what’s most important to you. This moment in our solar year is perfect for listening to your quietest, innermost voice. What is yearning to be born in this moment of stillness? What spark is born in the darkness?

“In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.” —Albert Camus

Well, here it is, Advent already. I’m not too great at marketing, but this is to let you know that my co-author Eileen and I are having a sale on our Advent and St. Nicholas Festival E-Book until December 7,2013. The sale price is $9.99—half off the regular price of $19.99.

It offers poems, stories, songs, crafts, and many special ways that families, schools, or childcare professionals can celebrate the whole month of December with children.

A measured, calm approach to the winter holidays gives children time to dream, live into the stories of their faith and the season, and count the days of Advent. Children can savor the passing of time with peaceful, delicious anticipation and gentle, useful activity, rather than experience the holiday as a single, frenzied, blowout day that is over all too soon. A peaceful Advent full of simple pleasures and togetherness is what they’ll remember later, not the package-ripping and specific, expensive gifts. We wrote this e-book with the intent of helping families create a thoughtful, heartfelt approach to the holidays, with less rushing commercialism and more togetherness time.

This mosaic is a peek at what’s in our Advent and St. Nicholas Festival E-Book. Click on the title  or any of these photos to be taken to the full description of the e-book contents and place to buy it, on the Little Acorn Learning store. Many thanks for reading this far, and for spreading the word to anyone who might be interested in our offering.

Blessings of the season on you and your loved ones!

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you’ve all had a wonderful holiday. I warn you, this post is going to try to do too much.

Thanksgiving vacation has been all in all pretty great. It started a day early with my grandmother’s funeral services. That first weekend was full and emotionally difficult, but the funeral services eased into an early Thanksgiving family gathering (Ian’s family this time), where people were kind and gentle to me and let me slide on everything because I was sad, and then a party at my home for Tony and our local November birthday girls. My friends made it soooo easy for me to host that party by helping to prepare my house. Once I got over being embarrassed by the neglected state of things, I let go and allowed them to make the place sparkle and shine. When the day of the party came, I just got to sit back and enjoy having my home full of lovely, friendly people. Many, many thanks to Lady K and Jami for making it so perfect.

I got to do two trail runs with Stacy. She is a super running partner for me—very encouraging and she has introduced me to the joys of running on the trails instead of the street. We’re evenly matched, and that means I don’t have to worry about holding her back, and vice verse. Running near the river means we get to see vistas and oak trees, deer trails and sparkling sunshine. This fills my heart as much as the running does.

While they had time off, the kids and I did some normal stuff, like shoe buying and errands. We had lunch with Papa and Uncle Mike one day. I couldn’t help but think I should go and visit my grandmother, but … the time for doing that is done.

We went running at Del Campo high school’s track on the day before Thanksgiving. We were getting ready for The Run to Feed the Hungry the next day. Thanksgiving morning dawned and we four went to East Sacramento to run a 10K. My goal was to run together as a family, keeping to our six-almost-seven-year-old’s pace—run when he could run, walk when he wanted to walk. It kind of worked and kind of didn’t. I kind of got the experience I had hoped for, but … well, let’s say that Ian was right and I was wrong and it is evidently too hard for fast boys to slow down enough to meet mama’s family experience agenda. We’ll chock this up to experience; I don’t actually know if we can do this event together again.

Asher ran 5.5 miles. We walked the rest and I’m so proud of him. He was absolutely determined to run, and lots of people cheered him on all along the course.

Here we are after the race. There were approximately 30,000 people there. The weather was perfect. The mood, festive. The course started and finished at Sacramento State University and looped through lovely East Sacramento. It was nice and flat.

And let me boast a moment by saying that running this 10K was an incredible accomplishment for me, personally. I’ve never been able to run this far in my life. I am slow, but the training I’ve been doing these last two months has paid off.

A big part of why I’m pushing so hard to rewire my brain about exercise is because I see how naturally movement and athletics comes to my family. I see how much joy they derive from using their bodies and I want very much to be a good role model for them. I also want to be physically capable of doing things they like to do. They have inspired me to be better about this aspect of my life.

Anyway, Thanksgiving. We went to my parents’ home for Thanksgiving dinner and enjoyed a few hours with them and my brother and his girlfriend. It was relaxed and easy, and just what I needed.

Sorry, more trail run pics. (Stopping just a sec to take a photo is fun and then I have pretty evidence that I really did it.) Stacy doesn’t seem to mind. We ran yesterday morning I am thrilled to keep going even after meeting our race goal.

We visited with my mother’s side of the family yesterday, too. Her brothers were in town visiting, so we got all five siblings together. Many thanks to my cousin Emily and her husband Mike for hosting. The shape of our family has changed and it was nice to meet all the kids and get them together. It was sweet how well they got along!

Asher and I have been reading a lot about Pilgrims, and the “first Thanksgiving” of 1621, which is entirely mythologized in our American culture. We’ve read about the time when the Wampanoag encountered the colonists at Plymouth, Massachusetts, who were able to settle the area because the former occupants, the Patuxet tribe, had been wiped out by disease. Amazingly, this interest Asher has is completely his—I didn’t choose these topics or books for him. Doubly amazingly is that both books about this time of American history do not give the American myth of the first Thanksgiving.

We’ve also been reading about Vikings, and how archaeologists and historians know what they know about them. Asher seems to have a budding interest in history.

We watched some “Avatar The Last Airbender,” a family autumn staple, and a movie called “Arthur and the Invisibles.” We have snuggled in, cooked and eaten meals together, gone to piano lessons and basketball practice, and the boys have started working on Christmas projects. Ian and I had a date night, Lucas did math homework, and I painted a bit and today I planted irises and tulip bulbs.

See what I mean? Too much in one post, and a full and wonderful week. We are thankful for so much love and abundance in our lives!

We did a little bit of crafting after I got home from work yesterday. Lucas went off to school for play practice, but Asher and I made a spur-of-the-moment lantern for Martinmas. We started with a long strip of plain paper, a sharpie, some star cookie cutters, watercolor paints, a wide mouth jar and ring, a glue gun, some yarn, and a candle.

Asher drew stars on his paper first with the sharpie, then he painted the paper. We dried it quickly with a hair dryer.

Then with the glue gun, I glued the paper around the outside of the jar. I tied four long pieces of yarn to the jar ring, then screwed on the ring to the top of the jar. I gathered up the yarn hangers into a single knot, then finger-knitted the tail to make a little handle.

The whole project took about 25 minutes.

Then Asher, Daddy, Solstice, and I went out for a little walk in the night. The lantern worked very well, and it was fun to be out after dark.

Although I have a whole collection of lantern songs, I didn’t practice them beforehand, and I couldn’t remember them very well. The last time we did this little ritual Asher was in preschool, and his sweet teacher led us and the other families through our neighborhood. Next year, in second grade, Asher will have a special Saint Martin night at school, in which the encounter between Martin, the young Roman soldier, and the nearly naked beggar, is reenacted. Martin cuts his warm cloak in two and gives half to the freezing man. Martin’s example of generosity is meant to prepare our hearts for the coming season of Christmas.

I am pulling winter clothes out of the totes stockpiled in the garage, hoping that some of these pants will fit Asher now. The few pairs of pants in his dresser are now too small, and the trees’ brilliant hues are telling me that cold weather is coming. I try telling my boys that, but they still insist on shorts and bare feet, whenever they can get away with it.

I do this turning over of belongings several times a year, unearthing Lucas’s old items from years’ past and diving into bags of clothes outgrown by friends’ children. The process isn’t pretty. Things are dusty and worn. I never manage to make the garage pile neat again when I’m done, much to my husband’s dismay. I also inevitably find a bag or box of forgotten items we just accidentally missed out on reusing. Sometimes, timing is everything.

This suburban archaeology makes me realize how my boys are always growing, growing, growing—whether I am OK with it or not. I feel nostalgic when I touch some old things again, after several years of their being absent and in storage, and I sometimes feel sad when giving current now-too-small things away. However, mostly I feel connected and grateful whenever I do this. I know that families all over the world do this very thing, every season or two, hoping to eek a little more use out of this shirt, these socks, those pants. We pass items along to younger siblings or friends, or strangers, with the hope of being helpful. And this pleases me.

To all those who have passed well-loved and still-useful items to us, thank you. Your generosity keeps us warm.

Well, with store-bought costumes and some travel toiletry bottles we had a wonderful Halloween. My little Potion-Maker loved everything about making the potions he wanted to carry along with him as part of his costume. So instead of spending the afternoon sewing, we did this.

With four little clear bottles, some food dye, water, and one bottle of bubbles, Asher had a ton of fun. He even picked herbs from our garden to add into his potions, elixirs, philtres, and tonics.

He really got into the part.

“Would you like a sample, my dear?”

Lucas was an Assassin. With a plastic katana and an old Harry Potter robe, he was quite happy. I think the blooming adolescent in him may have been relieved that his costume was a little downplayed. (But it didn’t stop him from playing assassin, running, climbing, jumping, and slicing with his sword.) I suspect next year he will want to be something really scary or gruesome.

Watch out. Assassins are everywhere.

Because it was a half-day at school, we had a little time to carve jack-o’-lanterns on this beautiful autumn afternoon.

(Since Halloween, our chickens have enjoyed eating the remains of our jacks.)

I figured out a costume for myself too: I went as the Cemetery Fairy. I figure that if there are fairies of the woods, meadows, fields, and seashores, there must also be fairies that take care of cemeteries too. At first, Asher didn’t like seeing me in white makeup with dark circles under my eyes and pale blue lips. But after a moment of thought, he decided he wasn’t going to be upset about it. “Go ahead, Mama. It’s OK.” Lucas took this cool photo above for me.

We spent the rest of the evening at a party at our friends’ home. Lucas and Asher enjoyed seeing their school friends and trick-or-treating with them. The neighborhood was really decorated and all the neighbors seemed to enjoy the spooky fun. Many people answered their doors wearing costumes! Lots of trick-or-treaters were out roaming. There’s something really marvelous about being a kid outside at night, running wild. Kids don’t get to do that much nowadays, so I think Halloween is just what the witch doctor ordered.

My kids got a huge haul of candy, some of which they sacrificed to the Halloween Fairy, aka Candy Fairy or Sugar Sprite. She was generous, I tell ya! Both kids got LEGO sets.