Painting by Lucas. Feliz Navidad!

In the season of quiet and darkness, I’m busy, busy with work—and not with the things I want to be doing. I want to be sipping tea and knitting, making toys for my children’s Christmas stockings, and celebrating the solstice. My kids are knocking around the house and into each other. I want to be out, taking photos and playing, and to be inside baking. I want to be working on photo albums of this year’s pictures for the grandparents. How retro is that?

Ian has been taking Lucas and Asher out and doing some of our errand-running, picking out gifts in my stead. This is no small feat with two small boys along for the ride. Also, there are some lovely, sparkling lights on our house thanks to Ian.

Today I had to tell some people that their deadlines are unreasonable and I can’t meet them. This is a tough thing to do and shakes my confidence a bit. I try to take comfort in knowing I am speaking up for myself and the book, and am being professional by saying, sorry, I won’t cut corners. Sometimes you have to wait if you want it done right. It’s been nerve-wracking because I’ve not heard back from the big boss. Neither, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” nor “OK. Thanks for making quality and accuracy your priority.”

Maybe that’s what’s got me feeling low. Or maybe it was my doctor appointment this morning. “Women your age should …”

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.

Our first batch of plum jam was made on December 4th with Papa. Last night we made another big batch and we’ll have to see later tonight whether it’s gelled properly. The jam is low in sugar, sweet-tart, and full of pulpy goodness. I hope it’s delicious.

The plums we used were frozen from last year’s harvest, when Dad and I picked way more than we could process in three jam-making sessions. It was a difficult time then, full of anxiety (and flat-out fear on my part) about Dad’s upcoming heart surgery, and making jam together was our bonding activity. It was special and sweet, the first time we had ever made jam together, and laced with uncomfortable overtones of, “what if.”

The jamming has been different this year. More of a celebration. More an act of thanksgiving for me. Dad is well, perhaps not fully recovered, but nevertheless doing great despite a lot of stress and caring for his 89-year-old mother and 96-year-old  aunt. He would say he’s all better now. I know he still tires easily.

I would be very pleased if I could be making plum jam with my dad for another 15 years.

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.

“The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads”

This is what I often find after working in the evening: Asher asleep in our room with Ian folding laundry and watching a program.

Gorgeous persimmons are ripening on my kitchen counter top. Last Friday the B children came over after school and we made a batch of cookies with the couple of persimmons that were ripe enough.

I’m really enjoying spending time with Snow in the kitchen; she has greater follow-through than my boys do. I seem to have hit on the magic formula: Every child measures and pours an ingredient into the bowl, taking turns until everything is in. Everybody mixes, counting their strokes. Eventually, the littler ones drift away to do something else and Snow and I spoon the cookie dough onto the pan. Then, she’s off to play with the others and I get the job of waiting for the oven buzzer, switching out pans, and cleaning up—the boring parts.

I’m learning to recognize (sometimes) when I have a need or expectation for a holiday. To me, it wouldn’t be Christmas time if we didn’t bake cookies. My kiddos didn’t think to ask to do this. But I realized it was something I needed to do. So, I set it up, carved out a moment, and made it happen. Of course, the boys are overjoyed at the opportunity to eat cookies. And, really, who wouldn’t be?

I should add another observation. Besides the script in my mind that says, “good moms bake cookies for Christmas,” there is another script running: “Sexy moms don’t eat cookies.” A little conflict there, perhaps.

Work continues at a much more relaxed pace this month. I’m reviewing second pages now of my textbook, making sure all the intense and involved changes we asked for last month were made. It’s looking good and I’m happy that the people down the line were able to do it. This one is not exactly easy for them, I’m sure, even though I’ve done everything I can to make it as painless as possible.

With some professional coaching, I have managed to change my banner image on my blog to my own wintry photograph. I’ve also added a caching plug-in, so now my site will be faster. And that’s just plain nifty!

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.