Last night we created the smallest, cutest Candlemas, or Imbolc,  ceremony in our home. (I’m sort of better at my practice in my mind than in practice, so to speak.) But this year we pulled it off. We rolled four simple beeswax candles and talked about it being the midpoint between the winter solstice, or beginning of winter, and the spring equinox, or end of winter/beginning of spring.

I love that the wintertime is punctuated by festivals of warmth and light, and that candles still have a beautiful place in even our modern homes. And damn, that beeswax smells so good! Children are usually far removed from the fire that has traditionally kept us warm, kept human beings safe and together, and helped us build and maintain our human family. That’s too bad. We try to light a candle every evening for our bedtime Candle Prayer. It’s good to be reminded of the magic of a lighted candle in the dark.

This is an exciting moment for me because from here on, I can look forward to spring. [Incidentally, this day (February 2) was my official due date for Asher’s birth three years ago. I sort of expected to have an Imbolc baby—it seemed to follow naturally since I already had a Beltane baby. Even though I didn’t have an Imbolc baby, the association is still there.]

Oh, and Happy Birthday to Lance, wherever he is.

We’ve been working today, getting ready for Asher’s birthday tomorrow. The bunting I made is hung, the pillowcase I sewed for him is done, the birthday crown I decided just yesterday to make for him is done but for the final fitting and seam. The cake is baked and cooling, and it will be ready for decorating tomorrow morning.

I took a ton of photos today, but here are a few of my favorites.

I’ve been working on a project that I learned about through Amanda Soule’s SouleMama blog and her book The Creative Family. It was the perfect project to allow me to practice with all the awesome new tools I got for Christmas.

What is it, you ask?

It’s a bunting for decorating. Some might call it a banner. It’s reusable, unlike crepe paper. I thought it would be nice to use this to decorate for Asher’s upcoming birthday party. I’ve never done anything like this before and I’m pretty stoked about how it turned out!

First, I bought fat quarters and spent entirely too much money. (If I were already a sewer with lots of useful fabric scraps lying about, this wouldn’t have been necessary.) To cut out the triangles I used the Fiskars rotary cutter and self-healing cutting mat my mother gave to me for Christmas. I also used the little Gingher embroidery shears that Lucas and Asher gave me and the Singer “Prélude” sewing machine from Mom and Dad.

That rotary cutter is an amazing and beautiful tool. Cutting took only a fraction of the time I thought it would take.

Isn’t my Singer pretty?

Over several short sessions, I sewed the triangles closed. Today I sewed the bunting all together using wide bias tape. It went very smoothly. I am still debating about whether to pink all the triangle edges.

I think it’s very festive!  The bunting is six yards long and I have enough triangles to make another of probably the same size. I think I will, since I’m not sure what I’d do with all these leftover triangles. I suppose I could try to make a quilt, but I think I’m not really ready for that yet.

It’s 10:30 a.m. on a holiday. My boys are all home and presently engaged in drawing backdrops for the Lego movie they plan on making today. I have no idea how they will accomplish this, given that we have an old-fashioned camcorder and not a fancy digital camera, nor any editing software. Perhaps I’m overthinking it. I’m hearing phrases about aliens and space police and stop-motion. Asher is helping, so it will be interesting to watch with one eye how this project unfolds (and potentially is destroyed by Baby Godzilla) .

I’m sitting here in my office in my living room trying to work and not pay too much attention to everyone. I’m trying to edit a strategy guide for a ubiquitous game franchise and it feels for all the world like I’ve read these exact words a hundred million times before. (OK. Maybe I’m not trying all that hard if I’ve stopped to write this post.)

Rain is falling outside and my throat’s a little sore, but I know there’s no point in going back to bed to rest more.

I’ve signed up for a class on developmental editing for fiction—I’m interested in learning how other people tackle this sort of thing, especially since I work in a vacuum most of the time. I’m hopeful that I’ll learn a bunch that will help me land more such projects. So I’m looking forward to the class and also hoping that it won’t take too much time away from my projects.

I’m starting a new project tomorrow and I’ll be working directly with the author. I expect another big nursing copyedit to come my way, but this one won’t be a whole book. I’ll be editing test questions and I expect that to take about two months, starting any day now.

My meeting with my uncle, who is the editor in chief for a religious publisher, was very productive. I get to look at his fall list and choose some books that sound interesting to me. I don’t know if I’ll really get my pick(s), but it sounds like a strong possibility. His books are very clever, scholarly, and carry some cachet, and the prospect of working on something challenging sounds good.

So, at the moment, I’m feeling pretty great about where I am in the world. Some interesting new things are on my horizon! Oh! And I bought a fabulous new coat yesterday.

I’m not a very patient person. About a hundred times a day, I have to take a deep breath and try to start over. Try to put aside the anger or frustration of the last moment and enter this moment with calm and right intention.

Start over.

It’s a practice; it often fails me, or I fail at it, but sometimes it works. It’s a constant effort to achieve forgiveness and regain my patience because we four bumble around each other in this smallish space, spilling food and bonking heads and fetching water and failing to share and making room and feeding bellies and cleaning messes. Without this starting over, this negotiation and mindful regrouping, we would never get through the day—any day, even the good ones.

I write here about the things I want to focus on, the good feelings, the good moments of family life because I want to remember them. Truly, our lives are so full and we enjoy so much good fortune. Conversely, I really try not to wallow in my feelings of frustration and rage, for doing so doesn’t do me any good and it harms the people around me. My children thrive when I’m present and patient. When I’m insane and shouting, we are all miserable. So I write to remember the good things someday in the future, but also to regroup and refocus right now on why I do what I do, why I am here and not elsewhere. It helps me remember my purpose, it helps me feel better about who I am and my current place in the universe. It helps me start over.

It’s easy for me to slip into complaining, and while I do think that occasionally writing about the crappy parts of this Mommy job is essential to maintaining my sanity, I try hard not to do it all the time. For if I don’t actively write about the great stuff, the sweet parts of this work, I easily drift off-course into dreary waters where dragons lurk.

For me, it’s a constant internal struggle and sometimes—usually—my riotous feelings must be subsumed in the needs of the family. Sometimes I hate it and want to break things, but doing so doesn’t change anything for anybody for the better. So I start over. Sometimes, on the other hand, I do have to cry or walk away for a while—to take care of myself and also to show my kids that I am a human being, that my feelings can be hurt when they are careless. If I’m careful about when I reveal this notion that Mommy is human, it can help us all start over. Sometimes I shout and lose it, and then crushing waves of guilt knock me off my feet. And then, once again, I start over.

The truth is, when Daddy is with us, I feel like 100 percent better and really do stay happier and in the moment. We can take turns being the strong/good one. He is my best friend and when he’s with me, it’s easy to see and feel how gorgeous all this that we have together is, how blessed we are. It’s when he is away and I’m with the kids for hours and hours without him that I start feeling lonely and stuck and jealous and hurt and a little bit like … how the hell did I get here?

And then some milk spills, or someone gets hurt, or the oven beeps, or a diaper needs changing, or a book needs reading aloud. Something happens—whatever this moment holds. I take a deep breath, and I start over.

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!

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

I’m totally behind in my personal pursuits, not the least of which is this blog. I wish it weren’t the 17th of November already, but it is and I must be grateful for the small moments of LIVING (apart from work) that have happened during the last few weeks.

On the Thursday before Halloween, we visited a local pumpkin farm. This is an indispensable outing; no matter how busy I am, pumpkins must be gathered from a local field where they were grown. I swear I couldn’t live without this tradition. I know pumpkins are cheaper (by a lot) at the grocery store. I simply won’t compromise on this photo opportunity. There is something magical about seeing my boys tromping through a field looking for the perfect, rumply, dumply, blumply, pumpkin.

And so, I present some of my favorite shots from this year’s pumpkin patch visit. The rest of my favs appear on my flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sarabellae/ or click on my photos page.

2008, Photo by Kellie

2007

2007

2005, Photo by Elisa

2004 (Lucas was Thomas again in 2005)

2003