Once again I’m in awe of what’s happening in my son’s sixth grade Waldorf class. Everything around him and everything in him is leveling up, stretching, ready to take on more. The class started this year with a new teacher and immediately tackled Rome and manned the Michaelmas dragon. They’ve studied astronomy, physics, added more mathematics into every day, and started writing essays. They’ve recently been through the Fall of Rome and are now working a unit on economics. They’ve begun to participate in organized individual and team sports at school, complete with coaches, practices, and competitions.

Right now, the sixth graders are studying economics and the mathematics that goes with it: money, interest, etc. They are launching into their study of the Middle Ages, too.

What’s more, they have a new class this year, taught by two amazing teachers: Social Arts class is one in which these gorgeous “tweens” are tackling issues of communication, individuality, self-expression, friendship, respect, personal space, and more to build a firm foundation for the coming (challenging) years. These children on the cusp of adolescence are courageous in so many deep and awe-inspiring ways. And Social Arts and their study of the Middle Ages are dovetailing into this:

The students have been asked to develop their own personal coat of arms and their own motto that reflect who they are. They have each chosen three challenges—physical, moral, and intellectual—which they must work on each day. Parents must sign off, to indicate the student worked toward meeting these challenges. In two weeks they will have a special overnight at school, complete with a nighttime vigil, scribing, and an initiation alone. In the morning they will be knighted in a special ceremony, complete with costumes, pageantry, and a medieval feast that follows.

My son has committed to running two miles every day, being nicer to his brother, and practicing his piano 10 minutes every day. These are his ideas and I appreciate how he picked things that are challenging and require diligence, but are within reach. Naturally, his other responsibilities and homework will continue during this time. He has done two days of twelve.

Then, a week after this knighting ceremony, his class will go on a five day trip to a local biodynamic garden, to work and study economics and food. They will be a stone’s throw from home, but gone longer than ever before.

I have been quieter on the subject of this child lately. I am sensing a shift in him and I want to respect his individuality and his privacy. Several people have asked me if I’ll keep blogging when my boys get bigger. I don’t really know; I guess that is a question I’ll have to continually ask. And I’ll do the best I can because, frankly, I’m off the map. Public and private life is different in this world than it used to be.

I write here for so many reasons. To figure stuff out—most especially myself—and to chronicle our experiences as a family. I write to hash out my feelings and record my discoveries and observations as a parent because this journey of motherhood is the most challenging thing I have ever undertaken and I am learning every day. I also write to honor ourselves as individuals, for at each moment we are beautiful, striving, growing, and changing, and to honor our relationships, for these too morph as we go through time together.

So much change is happening for this sweet son of mine. It is hard at times and wonderful. I stand in awe of him and all he is now, knowing that he has so very much more becoming to do. I am so grateful that our parenting is supported by this sixth grade curriculum and that we are surrounded by so many loving educators who are willing to honor this age. Truly, we are educating his head, heart, and hands.

* A night out dancing and celebrating with my sparkling friends.
* Grandparents who take my boys overnight so I can be with adults at a nightclub.
* Friends who figuratively put on their wellies and step into the muck to help others, who sacrifice and do the work and give so much of themselves.
* Visiting my mother-in-law over coffee, and admiring how she has already thriving vegetable garden seedlings under a grow light in her dining room.
* New-to-us chairs from my parents; they’re more comfortable than any chairs we have, even if they are a shade or two too purple.
* Working all together on housekeeping chores that might not be fun, but that make our living together easier and our home the haven we want it to be.
* Giving away wonderful games and puzzles to my sweet nieces.
* A brief visit from my brother and his girlfriend, who brought us the chairs.
* Gardening time: I planted pansies, divided day lilies to make two new clumps, planted forsythia, planted two irises that have been in pots a while. I was able to divide each iris into several groups.
* Watching my garden come alive again with new shoots, daffodils, magnolia, and azaleas blooming, and tulips coming up. My plum trees are clothed in flower clouds, too.
* Rain. Yumptious, sloppy, wet rain that soaks the ground and demonstrates our persistent drainage problems.
* Flower and seed catalogs that come in the mail.
* Being done with basketball season, but also feeling so grateful for all Lucas learned, for his wonderful coach and teammates, and for a wholly positive experience.
* Having work to do, even if it’s not very interesting. I’m learning more about surgery than I ever have before.
* A reunion with my husband; although I hate it when he goes (and I try not to whine), I love it when he comes home.
* Taking my dad to a Ladysmith Black Mambazo concert this week
* Little Fur audiobooks, which are entertaining my little son while he’s home sick today.
* Window stars.
* Fractal vegetables and welcome-home dinners.
* The sixth-grade Waldorf curriculum, which is so brilliantly meeting our son.

I am a great admirer of the traditional Chinese art of papercutting. I think it is a simply exquisite art form. I have no idea how people do it, and no doubt that I’ll never achieve anything remotely like it. But I do love cutting paper snowflakes and I wondered if I could maybe come up with a design that looked like a horse, in honor of the 2014 Year of the Horse in the Chinese zodiac. Well, I know from years of experience trying to draw horses (from the ages of 6 to 13) that horses are not all that easy to draw. But, I tried my hand while recuperating on the couch, ill myself and with ill family all around me.

It’s fun, so you might want to give it a try. Fold a paper snowflake (half, half again, half again into a triangle). Then draw your horse design onto the top triangle with a pencil. You have to make several parts of the horse go all the way to the folded edges of the paper. This keeps the design connected.

For the red paper, I used a silk paper from A Toy Garden. It is delicate and very slightly see-through. It’s thinner than copy paper, so your shape will be easier to cut out. Red construction paper is thicker, and therefore harder to cut through multiple layers.

Experiment with white paper first to perfect your design, if your red paper is precious. Honestly, I think it’s the red paper that makes this feel special when it’s all cut out. What can you come up with? Hang your papercut in the window. Good luck and Gung Hay Fat Choy!

“If Candlemas Day be fair and bright, Winter will take another flight. If Candlemas Day be cloud and rain, Winter is gone and will not come again.”

This has been a weekend jam-packed with holidays and special events: Asher’s seventh birthday, Lunar New Year, Super Bowl today, and Imbolc, or Candlemas, and Groundhog Day. I have a post or two brewing, particularly Asher’s birthday celebration. Unfortunately, we’ve been pretty sick and down for the count for a couple of days.

Asher and I had some time this morning while Lucas and Ian were at basketball practice. We thought Imbolc would be a good time to bring out the wool roving and make something wooly and beautiful. There’s something soothing and lovely about the feel of warm, soft wool in your hands. Asher has never needle-felted before, but he was ready for it. We used a white wool base that I had felted into a rough oval at some time in the past. Asher got to choose the colors for our meadow scene. We worked together and I taught him how sharp and stabby the needle can be, and that we must be very careful. He seemed to enjoy the felting. It was fun making this little wool painting of sheep in a meadow with him.

Last week, one of the school sheep gave birth to two sweet lambs. We enjoyed a little bit of rain, too. These are some of the many blessings in our winter. What are your wintertime blessings?

Since today is quite fair and not rainy, I’m hoping that we have more weeks of (wet) winter ahead of us. We really need the rain.

If you’d like more info about this festival, I wrote about Imbolc last year here. And here is a little family ritual we did to focus on the hearth and home aspects of this Celtic holiday.

Happy Imbolc, or Candlemas, or feast day of Saint Brigid, Groundhog Day, or Super Bowl day! Whatever you do today, be sure to do it with people you love.

We are in desperate need of rain here in California. We basically haven’t had a winter at all. Most days are in the 60s, sunny, and completely pleasant. It means that we’re out and about and active, which is nice. But our lakes and reservoirs are woefully low. When the high temps (100+) come this summer, we’ll be very sad about having had so little winter rain.

The sky is currently cloudy and we’re hoping that the “storm door” will open with a rain in a couple of days. We thought it would be fun to do a quick craft project to make a rainstick. Maybe it will help the rains come?

Materials

• poster tube, or paper towel or wrapping paper tube
• nails that aren’t quite as wide as the diameter of your tube
• hammer
• cardboard
• scissors
• pencil
• dry beans or peas
• masking tape
• decorating supplies such as mod podge and tissue paper, or paints

Tutorial

The nails you use should be not quite as wide as the diameter of your tube. Nail them straight into the tube in a helical pattern all the way down the length of the tube.

Watch those fingers! Hammering is such a good time. Kids should hammer often, I think. Make sure everyone gets a turn!

You can kind of see the spiral pattern of the nails in this photo.

(My boys jumped at this project. I think it was the chance to use the hammer.)

Insert your dry beans (or peas or rice or pebbles—use whatever you like). We used dry chick peas because that’s what we had on hand. Once the beans are inside, place your hand over the open end of the tube, turn it, and listen to how they sound when they run through the gauntlet of your nails. Experiment with using more or less beans until it sounds like rainfall.

If your tube came with end caps, great. Ours had one, but we had to make the other. Using a pencil, we traced the tube end onto a piece of cardboard and cut out the circle. We trimmed it until it fit neatly on the end of our tube. When we were sure we had the right rain sound, we put on the end piece and taped it down with masking tape. Make sure both tube ends are completely secure.

Then we taped over all the nail heads all the way along the tube. We didn’t want any nails working their way out of the cardboard later.

That’s it. The rainstick is done and functional now. The rest is decoration! Asher enjoyed this next part a lot; 11-year-old Lucas was happy to let Asher finish it.

We used tissue paper in watery colors and mod podge to decoupage the outside of our rainstick.

After it dried completely, we added stamped designs, which you can see in the top photo. Alternatively, you can paint your tube with acrylic or tempera paints to decorate it, or draw on it with sharpie markers.

We hope this gray sky will open up and produce several weeks of decent rains. As much as we enjoy these short-sleeve temperatures and sunny days, we need to splash in some puddles! I asked my kids if they thought our rainstick would have any magical effect and bring the rains. They chuckled and said, “No. But it was fun, Mom.” Still, I’m hoping …

I’ve been meaning to write this post for four months now. A-hem.

Lucas joined the school’s cross country running team this past fall. He’s in sixth grade and it was his first opportunity to be involved in school sports, and he jumped in with both feet and tons of heart. The team started practicing even before the school year began, and Ian and I watched with wide eyes as he completed two after-school practices each week and ran meets on many Saturdays and a few Wednesdays too. The sixth grade boys turned out in force (I think we had eight from our class), and for many of them it was their first team sport experience. I am so proud of them. They were supportive of each other, encouraging, and really gave it their all.

They trained hard and had a lot of fun too. Practices often involved running more than 3 miles.

They practiced and ran races in 100-degree heat. Races were usually about 1.4 miles or 1.25 miles long.

These are shots from their very first meet at the Lagoon Valley Classic Invitational in Vacaville.

This was a meet that took place at Capital Christian Center school. I love this photo because it illustrates what it’s like to have sixth, seventh, and eighth graders racing at the same time! (Fortunately, they gave medals for the five fastest boys in each grade.) It also illustrates to me how much growth our boys are going to experience in these next three years.

Some of our boys are just born to run; they’re fast and lithe, and they want it bad. But all the Sacramento Waldorf School boys were dedicated and worked hard to improve their times. And they all did through their training.

Lucas came in fifth of all the sixth graders at this Capital Christian race. It was a very proud moment for him.

Over the course of the season, which was about eight weeks long, he improved his mile time by more than two minutes. By the end of the season he was running a mile in under-7-minutes.

This was in the foothills at Foresthill High School for the Wildfire Invitational. The Waves middle school runners were warming up. This course took them a little more than a mile through the forest. It was a beautiful location.

And how’s this for a culminating moment? In the last meet of the season (“The Other Meet”), the runners trekked out over a track through an undeveloped field on the edge of some soccer fields. They ran past a hornet nest, and the insects stung them. Some described seeing runners covered in hornets. All of our boys came back with a sting or two. They kept running and all of them finished the race! So tough! I think I would have flipped out had I been in their shoes.

The middle school runners’ season ended in the middle of October. The Waves high school runners continued to train and run till Thanksgiving. I somehow misunderstood the team schedule and assumed that Lucas would train through November also. When we learned that was not the case, it was a great disappointment for him. He was having the time of his life and getting so good, he just wasn’t ready for the season to end! I am quite sure that he will be on the team next fall.

The Waves high school runners went on to perform very well in statewide competitions. They run faster and farther in their meets. The coach is looking at this big crop of young, middle school runners with excitement, perhaps imagining what they will do when they are older.

We are so proud of Lucas and what he accomplished! We are delighted that his first team sports experience was so completely positive, so affirming and encouraging. We are so grateful to the coaches, the other parents, and to kids on the team for such a wonderful time. And we cannot wait for next year’s season.

* An extra much-needed day of work, and appreciation for a job well done
* A mom friend who takes my boys home with her children and feeds them
* Parents (kids’ grandparents) who arrive home, safe and rested, from their vacation
* Delivering the requested milk and bread, and turning on the heat in the house 12 hours before they get home
* Shark tooth necklaces and sea salt seasonings from Hawaii
* An assistant basketball coach/dad turned coach, who is passionate about teaching, connected, and dedicated to helping our boys get the most out of their season
* A little boy who writes his own game books
* Friends who run with you, even if you’re slow
* Friends who hike six beautiful miles with you, and let you cover even more territory in conversation
* Visiting friends from out of town who don’t mind either sleeping bag or early-morning boy bounces
* Blueberry muffins from scratch, because someone small asked for them
* Big boys who need and ask for an extra cuddle at night to help them fall asleep
* Friday night fish tacos à la Daddy
* Friends who take you to places in your hometown’s backyard that you’ve never seen before
* Grandmas who take boys to school and pick boys up from school
* Watching my son and his friends/teammates win a basketball game
* Helping friends with their farm-to-fork movie contest
* Date night featuring a sushi gift card and The Hobbit.

Our Christmas was so nice this year. We eased into it. I had some downtime and the kids and I were able to prepare the house, little by little.

We spent some time stamping our own wrapping paper, making star ornaments for gifts, and making decorations for our home, like this evergreen garland that we hung above our front door and decorated with ornaments and a bow.

We had our traditional sushi dinner with Ian’s father and his lovely girlfriend, Miriam (whom we call Mimi). Always a high point of our Christmas season—a moment of relaxation juxtaposed with great antici—-pation.This year we got to hear a little more about their recent trip to Peru, when they visited Machu Picchu and climbed to—I forget exactly—umpteen thousand feet above sea level.

Our boys woke bright and early on Christmas morning, just as they always do.

Stockings and presents from Santa came first. Santa brought Asher this cool soccer ball in his favorite color!

And he brought Lucas a calligraphy set, with three pens, and several different ink colors and a book to learn how to make fancy letters. (Waldorf sixth graders study the Middle Ages, you know.) Santa also brought a family present, one for the four of us to enjoy together: Castle Ravenloft, a Dungeons & Dragons board game!

And some Magic the Gathering cards came in each stocking. These are a huge hit around here lately.

Then an amazing and touching thing happened: The boys allowed me to open my present first, and it turned out to be a scavenger hunt that they put together with Ian. I had to find notes and pieces of my present all over the house. Each note had a clue where to go next. Canvases in sizes I’ve never used before (two big ones!) and a beautiful HUGE paintbrush. It was delightful and such a surprise!

The rest of our morning at home was about exchanging sweet gifts. Asher gave me a beautiful rose quartz crystal, wrapped in a rainbow silk—both his own precious belongings. He gave daddy a fairy jewel. Lucas was pleased with his gift to Ian: a copy of Fortunately the Milk, by Neil Gaiman. He sure knows his dad!

One of my gifts to Lucas was a collection of prints showing Lord of the Rings actors and Tolkien quotations. I hope he likes them. (We still haven’t put them up yet.)

Such abundance! Books, modeling clay, LEGO Chima (Asher’s favorite!), new running shoes for active boys, sketch books and art supplies. Daddy and I both got some workout gear. I guess some families do just one or two gifts each. We do a bunch of smallish gifts that support each other’s dreams and hobbies. I like it. But this year was a departure from normal: The boys opened a big box containing Mickey Mouse ears and travel brochures. We are all going to Disneyland in February!!!

It took a little while for this information to sink in …

(Many, many thanks to my uncle Mike and aunt Julie for procuring the hats and brochures from the Magic Kingdom itself. They helped to make the deferred trip seem real.)

I love moments like this one: Ian relaxing in his favorite chair, with his fluffy dog, a new book, new slippers on his feet, and a cup of joe.

On Christmas day, we also visited family at Ian’s parents’ home and my parents’ home. We were grateful to see grandparents, cousins, and aunts and uncles at both. More gifts, good food, and silliness were the orders of the day. Can’t beat it! Asher received a toy bow with nerf-tipped arrows that fly far and don’t hurt anything when they hit; it’s one of his favorites. Grandma VoVo gave the boys such a clever thing: a money-saving jar with a counter and a bunch of coins. She wrote Disneyland on it so they can save up for our trip next month. Lucas received what I think is one of the hottest toys of the season: a rainbow loom for making rubber band bracelets. Grandma Sydney sewed them each new pajamas and knitted them hats. Such lucky, lucky boys. Truly, we are all so very blessed in every way.

The days that follow Christmas are always some of our favorite days of the whole year. We are together at home, snuggly warm and content. We have lots of wonderful new diversions. We can play together. Slowly we clean up after the holiday party at our home; slowly we eat up delicious leftovers. The boys pored over many, many new Magic cards from Uncle Tate.

It has been unseasonably warm here for the last two months, as you can probably see in this photo. We played soccer with Asher’s new ball at the school field at the end of our street—in shirt sleeves and shorts!

The new ball drew a crowd of neighborhood boys. 🙂

And we played our new family D&D game. Thanks Santa!

There’s much more to say about the two weeks of Christmas vacation, I’m sure. But I’ve sat on this post for too long already. So I’ll sign off with this gorgeous winter sunset and say simply, we are happy and so blessed. I hope your winter holidays were equally magical.

Happy Santa Lucia Day! Yesterday Asher and I made a lovely cardamom bread dough and the boys and I shaped it together after school.

I had a baking mishap—I cooked it a little too long, or maybe too hot—and so it’s a little browner on top than I’d like it to be, but it still tastes delicious in every other regard. We had a nice, special breakfast this morning. I am pretty sure the kids weren’t too into it this year, although Lucas did say Santa Lucia bread is his favorite bread. Asher wouldn’t eat it. What can ya do?

The Winter Concert is tonight at our Waldorf school, and the whole school, grades 2 through 12, will perform songs with voices and instruments. The sixth grade is performing the traditional (for us?) sword dance tonight. Every year it is a joy to watch, but this year is special to me because Lucas’s class is dancing. He is not very enthusiastic about it.

(This is a sword dance shot from last year.)

Anyway, I hope this day brings you a sweet moment of light in the darkness. May you be with people who shine love into your life.

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!