Star Wars: The Clone Wars seeps into my home via the playground—a Waldorf playground, mind you. Neither of my children have seen any Star Wars movies, and yet …

Asher: “I’m R2D2. I say ‘beepboopbopbeep’ and I have no arms. You want to be Yoda?”

Me: “No, thanks.”

Asher: “You want to be a guywalker?”

Me: “No.”

Lucas: “What about Leia Skywalker? She’s Luke’s sister. Do you want to be her?”

Me: “Not really.”

Lucas: “What about Ahsoka?”

Me: “Who is Ahsoka?”

Lucas: “YOU DON’T KNOW WHO AHSOKA IS?!?!?”

Me: “Nope.”

Lucas: “She’s Anakin’s PADDYWON.”

Me: “What’s a paddywon?”

Lucas: “I don’t know.”

Asher: “I’m R2D2firefighterStarWarsCloneWarsdoctor! Beepboopbopbeep! Yoda fights a creepy bad buy named nofing. I’m cooking dinner. Meatballs and getti. You want to come to my factory?”

Today is exciting because this afternoon Ian and I get to meet with Lucas’s second-grade teacher to see how he’s doing in school. (Our meeting should have occurred last November, but we didn’t make our appointment [insert guilty feeling here].)

Since our Waldorf school doesn’t give out grades, this is our big, mid-year opportunity to find out what’s going on with Lucas and how he’s progressing academically, socially, artistically, and emotionally—from his teacher’s perspective. I know what I think—that he’s brilliant and creative and diabolical and sensitive and totally likable—but then, I’m his mother, and decidedly not the one trying to teach him maths and cursive handwriting!

Painting by Lucas. Feliz Navidad!

An elfin warrior and a good soldier koala man fight the evil emperor, who threatens the kingdom of cuddly Oo Ah Ee creatures!

No toys in this house are played with as much as these colorful silk scarves, except perhaps for Legos. Lucas never tires of inventing stories and now that Asher is almost 3-years-old, he has plenty to add to the games. Their play is far more imaginative,  interactive, and involves more role-playing than it was just six months ago. This is a beautiful thing because the more they play imagination games, the more they are cooperating instead of competing for resources. Fortunately, we have plenty of play silks.

My mud monster with eyes like the sea. Lucas spent this day sliding in the mud at school. Because on a muddy December play yard at a Waldorf school, nobody is going to stop you from doing it. I’m grateful for that. And then at home, after this photo was taken, Lucas learned how to put a load of laundry into the washer. I’m grateful for that, too.

We got to spend some time alone together Thursday night and it was so good. Lucas and I attended the Las Posadas celebration at his school, saw some friends, ate a churro, and he got to hit the piñata. At first, it was a little stilted; we were in our own two worlds with our own distractions. But some satsumas and a candy from the piñata, and then some salad, yummy pizza, and conversation helped. We played a few games of Connect Four at the pizza parlor, and then we puzzled our way through a face-guessing game without any instructions. It was fun and got us all warmed up and connected. At home, still just the two of us, we got Lucas ready for bed and read some Christmas stories. We even sang the “Twelve Days of Christmas” with gusto along with the picture book. And we snuggled.

I’m struck by how much my relationship to this boy has changed since his brother arrived. There was a time when Lucas and I were completely inseparable. I love him completely and am reminded that there needs to be time for just us.

I’m working on being both reasonable and flexible this holiday season—reasonable about what I can accomplish and flexible when circumstances change and obstacles arise.

I had high hopes that we could go up to the foothills this year to hunt for our Christmas tree, but the rainy weather on Saturday and limited time made the trip impossible. We always have such fun visiting the craft fairs and enjoying a slice of apple pie. Instead, we went to Lucas’s school and bought a beautiful tree. Our money will help the school and a group of girls who have formed a eurhythmy troop. We were back home with our tree in less than 30 minutes, which meant that we got the whole thing decorated in a day, instead of it taking all weekend (a day in the foothills, and a day to decorate the tree).

It’s wacky that so many of our ornaments have memories attached to them. I often know where they came from—who gave this one to us, what year I bought that one, which ones are handmade, where Mom and Dad were traveling when they picked up those two, what this one meant to me when I received it. I have ornaments that have been on my family’s Christmas tree since I was in preschool. And if that’s not sentimental, I don’t know what is.

Lucas, after the Santa Lucia walk through 11 grades and the school office. The children braved the cold and rain to deliver their message of light and the coming of Christmas, and buns for everyone!

As the youngest boy in the class, he carried a lantern and wore a special outfit, including grandma’s sweater and a hat I made.

When I told Lucas the other day that his name and Lucia both mean light, he smiled really big.

I wish I could say I am the picture of calm. I often am not. Today I had both kids home “sick,” although they don’t look very sick to me. In some ways it was good to spend my time thinking about things other than my textbook deadlines. I tried really hard to be the domestic goddess. I sewed, cooked, cleaned, laundered, and baked—with yeast. I have been successful. I also have lost my cool several times.

And now that it is 4:53 p.m., I would like to walk out the door wearing high heels and not come back until tomorrow morning. I would like, for a while, to be a dancing, on-my-own, free-as-a-bird goddess.

Just saying.

Instead, let’s talk about Santa Lucia and the festival that we’ve been preparing for this week. Lucas’s class will be visiting all the grades in the school, singing songs and delivering Santa Lucia buns to every student and teacher in the school. Lucia was a pious girl who ended up tortured and suffering. She is thought to have brought food and drink to poor people in Sweden and the Swedes love her.  (When Ian lived in Sweden, he participated in a Santa Lucia festival and sang songs to his college profs wearing a pointy Star Boy hat.)

But I digress.

The traditional Lucia festival was held on the 13th of December, which the Internet tells me was the winter solstice during the middle ages. The festival is, at heart, a festival of light designed to honor the darkest moment of the year in the hopes that by doing so we can encourage the light to return. In Sweden, the oldest girl in the family rises early, bakes Lucia buns, wears a crown of lighted candles, and with her siblings, serves her parents buns and sings traditional songs.

Lucas has a special role to play in the Lucia festival. He is the youngest boy in his class, so he will be dressed as a gnome, in an all-red gnome outfit with a pointy hat. The hat I made from scratch out of wool felt. I sewed a little gold star on it for a decoration. Then I went hunting for red sweatpants. Target, K-Mart, Penny’s, and even Wal-Mart do not have red sweatpants. I went to the thrift store and found some that were rather too big, but, for $1.98, possibly not too, too big. I chopped off the extra length on the legs, hemmed them, and then doubled the waistband an inch or so in the back, and stitched it together. I had hoped I might be able to open the elastic waist, cut it, and cinch it tighter, but it was stitched down all the way around. Still, I think now they won’t fall off him.

I volunteered to bake Santa Lucia buns, so that was today’s major project. I am happy to say they are edible! I’m not a big bread-maker. I don’t know how many years it’s been since I made a yeast bread. The kids helped and when they were done, we sampled a couple. Pretty tasty. But it seemed to me the dough did not rise as much as it should have. I probably should have practiced before baking for reals.

We are deep in the festival season now, a time when it seems there is a new festival to be celebrated every other day. The season kicks off with Michaelmas in September, then moseys on to Halloween. After that, it picks up speed, rushing quickly through Martinmas, Thanksgiving, and St. Nicholas’s Day. You might say it’s snowballing, rushing through Advent downhill toward Christmas and the year’s end. I admit I’ve had fewer cycles to give to all of this celebrating because of work, and that is disappointing to me. But one of my daily lessons in life and parenting is I must do what I can, and that is all I can do. It is enough. (I tend to fight this lesson a lot.)

Before Thanksgiving, we went to a St. Martin’s Lantern Walk at Lucas’s school. The children in second grade made their own beautiful lanterns from milk cartons. They whitewashed, painted, and created tissue-paper windows in their lanterns before the big event. On Friday, November 13, about a hundred people gathered in the darkness at school and walked a lovely path through the woods. We came upon a beggar man and St. Martin on his brave charger (a real horse!) in the night. Silently we watched Martin give the beggar a cloak to wear and a sack of food, for Martin is a generous man. The children sang their lantern songs, and carefully carried the lighted lanterns dangling from a stick.

About a half-hour before it was time to go to this festival, I realized that Asher would be sorely disappointed not to have a lantern to carry, too. So I whipped up this one, using a plastic jar and leaves and tissue paper. I was drying it with a hair-dryer just before we walked out the door. Instead of fire, I placed a few glow bracelets inside the lantern and sealed it up tight. The lantern glowed nicely—and safely—which was just as I had hoped. It got bounced around an awful lot!

Now, nearly a month later, the lantern is looking a little worse for wear. If I had had more time, I would have covered the top with a pretty fabric.

Asher's 30-Minute Martinmas Lantern

He has amazed me again.

Despite his talk of playground “wars” and “battles,” despite recently being advanced to “third leader” of the “team” and functioning as the team’s “policeman” and “guard,” my 7.5-year-old son is only gradually transforming from soft, sweet little boy to capable tough guy. Parents often speak of the phenomenon of kids moving two steps forward, one step back, and I see this in Lucas. Sometimes he is macho, other times, vulnerable and … “young.” My tough guy channeled his considerable developing skills into a softer direction for a project that he conceived himself.

Lucas started thinking ahead to Christmas the other day and decided that he wanted to make a lovey doll for Asher. He took out his sewing kit (a Christmas gift from Ian and me two years ago), his felt, and scissors and went to work. He politely asked for wool roving to stuff his doll’s body, a short tube of felt. Then he made an arm, stuffed it, and sewed it on to the body. Then another. By then I was feeling pretty impressed because he was sticking with the project and doing it without help.

A busy day went by, and Lucas asked me if I would help him make the doll’s head: He didn’t have the right material in his fabric stash. Last night, I dug out more wool and some pinkish jersey knit fabric and together we made the head. (This is the only part I helped with.) That’s all we had time for before bed, though.

As I was putting Lucas to bed, he said, “I really want to take my doll to show and tell tomorrow.” I expressed concern that we probably wouldn’t have time to finish it before school in the morning, but he could certainly work on it over vacation and then take it to the next show-and-tell day. I gushed over how great he was doing, and how I’m sure his teacher and classmates would be pleased to see what he made.

When I first laid sleepy eyes on Lucas this morning, he proudly showed me how he had already sewed the doll’s head onto the body, and given it blue eyes with his embroidery thread. I think it was five minutes after 7 then. Within another 15 minutes, he had stitched on a smiley red mouth and some blond wool roving for hair. At breakfast, he announced, “My doll’s name is Willow Bean.”

I think Lucas is so proud of his doll that he is probably going to keep Willow Bean for himself and not give the doll to Asher for Christmas. I really don’t blame him a bit.