Your Plans Are As Unique As You

      Halloween was last night which means that today is the beginning of Christmas for me. I know it sounds overblown to some and like we are perhaps jumping the gun but this is the way that I can maintain sanity as a mama. If I give myself more time, I can enjoy my pumpkin spice lattes and the leaves turning color while I plan my gift lists and read to the kids from the holiday book basket. Its the best time ever to get my ducks in a row and even to get a little private celebrating in before we are traveling. One of the hardest things about traveling for the holidays is the feeling of no personal celebration, no ability to be the mama myself for the holidays.  We are all living our own individual lives and I know that part the secret to my own happiness is an earlier and earlier start on the holiday season. I use a Christmas planner and a couple of books in a haphazard fashion, I scroll Pinterest and I scribble lists on odd papers....and also, I fly by the seat of my pants. This is me after all.

None of those formulas for how many gifts to buy or when exactly you should begin making cookies and storing them in the freezer are exactly right for any exact year in my exact life. I do like the concept though....so I try to come up with my own personal targets and magpie into my plans those that do seem to align. The point is to enjoy and relish the bustle and prep, the weight of responsibility that comes with being a merriment creator and the freedom and mental space that can come from a little more time coupled with some plans and systems.

This week I am revamping our breakfast menus and schedules for some of the same goals: more space, simplicity, bustle, and responsible feeling motherhood. There are things to put in line and ways to trim our old meal ideas so that they fit our new schedule and the changing interests of the palates in our home. I wish we fit some vanilla template but none of these things work that way. We nature journal, but not like anybody tells you to. I just bought, leafed through and then sold a book on How To Teach Your Child Shakespeare because we were doing bits of it already, some things were useful additions and lots of it needed to be passed on because we have a plan, its just the one that we are creating ourselves at our kitchen table. Its an interesting evolution to see myself both becoming a planner and also recognizing that for our individual house, nobody can hand me the plan. Plans are dynamic and shifting, we outgrow them and get bored by them, and all of our households quirky oddments will never be in anybody else's list.

Here's the marching to the beat of our own drums...ah yes, but marching to a beat! Lets all plan our own plans and come up with systems by being the wise observers and sensitive curators of our own people and lives. There's no easy out, nobody can do the work of life for you. But, after all....Halloween was just last night, you have time and so do I.  

Neighborhood Dress-Up

Our Halloween was grand. All rustling leaf kicking, mulled cider and laughing murmur of conversation. The big boys (demonstrating our slide into video games this year) were a Mario Luigi duo. They are the most innocuous and classic of video game characters so I couldn't complain too much. How upset can you really be when your four year old is standing there grinning with an enormous faux handlebar mustache happy as the day is long? Not very upset. Mama picks her battles.

There was an astounding and record breaking amount of candy gathering. The big boys are getting to be very stout walkers and Ru in particular is quite enamoured of ringing doorbells which all winds up meaning three gigantic jars full of candy on my top pantry shelf. And this after The Great Binge when we returned to the house. Gah! Yipes.

I think I will continue investigating candy-free stocking stuffers and Easter Basket contents and find pretty little paper-cutting ways to celebrate St. Valentine's Day lest our home be mistaken for Willy Wonka's great factory! Good for me anyhow...gives some starch to the direction I was leaning and the ideas I was hoping to eventually work into. Sugar mustn't be allowed to be the only way to celebrate.

The leaves are coming down fast now. There's a shivery chill on the wind and I find myself noticing it extra now that several of our friends are out of power and shuddering along in the dark wondering when the power company will get to their road. Seemed like just last I was thinking to myself that even though it was technically fall the  weather didn't feel like it had really turned much yet. I'm not sure if I started paying attention or if the thermometer is starting to get serious now that it is officially November.

We're almost to the weekend and its going to be one of those crispy, pink nosed ones where you have a log fire in the morning on Saturday and then go off to pick apples later in the day. My friend, Nutmeg brought me a box of Indian Spice tea and I'm thinking a big pot of chai would hit the spot in the thermos on the way!

Pumpkin Moonshine

The giant pine in the yard next door is dropping gold needles down the driveway again. The gutters on that side of the house are softly filling up with yellow and I have been somewhat fretfully shifting piles of paper around the house looking for where in the world I might have put the business card of "Cesar" who came two years ago (I forgot last year) with his mustached smile and his cousin and cleaned the gutters. I think maybe I haven't looked in the junk drawer yet. What do you think? Is it there?

Last night while A put the kids down I unloaded our pumpkins from the back of the van by moonlight and arranged them on the front steps: soft, pleated orbs glowing there in front of the porch pillars. How in the world did there come to be six pumpkins on my front porch waiting for their respective owners to carve them into jack-o-lanterns? That seems impossible. Amazing how fact moves on without our real absorption in life. It takes a long time to understand and know a new person....I can't believe there are four little people who live in my care these days and that some of them have been here for years.

The maple in the front yard is starting to go from dark burgundy to a brighter flame scarlet. And the burning bush that has wedged itself into our hedge is already dropping its leaves on top of the pine needles in the driveway. Time to test-drive a few new recipes for pumpkin pie or roasted  meats, light some candles, boil some spices and orange peel and figure out how to seal our windows with that plastic film stuff I bought a few years ago and never manage to actually get up.

I wish you a few moments under the moonlight for pumpkiny reflection, a giant mug of tea and a slow, slow wind-up to the season of cold weather illness. My first patient is moaning on the sick couch behind me as I type with feverish cheeks. I am taking my cod liver oil and believing in mommy resilience. 

Sweet Moments

You can tell Halloween just happened and we're still living in the celebratory Land of Abundant Candy when you open the dishwasher and find the soap cup has been secretly stashed with the toddler's back-up supply of fruity ju-ju drops. Sometimes motherhood does make me smile. Love the random silly bits of life.

Halloweens of Yore

Halloween was beautiful. I was worried all the snow we got right before the holiday would make for frigid trick-or-treating but it turned out to be a balmy night with just the right amount of nose nipping chill in the air.

Our yard, the day before Halloween

I think, all things considered that it was actually warmer than last year on Halloween. The boys all chose their own costumes, second year of the big boys actually having opinions of their own about what they wanted to be. Kind of fun to see what they think would be fun. My big qualm was that Ru chose "an Indian" and then wanted a boy and arrow and a feather headband and the whole nine yards. It wasn't terribly p.c. but I let him do it. He meant no disrespect so I decided if he's inspired by pretending a tribal identity, I'd let him live his little boy dream for the night. He felt really cool.

I was a zebra, for extra holiday spirit, A was a cowboy although I don't have a good picture.

I did very little this year for the holiday. No homemade costumes, no fancy food...no impressive decorating.We attended a party some friends of ours threw which was zero work for us, A bought the trick-or-treat candy for the visitors we had and I only bought one costume, for Dee...who was the most adorable frog ever. Nib re-used a doggy costume from previous years and the Indian costume was a friend's hand-me-down gift which happened to be Ru's secret yen anyhow.

We had a "special" snack of popcorn before door-to-door trekking to try to make sure that the kids actually had something vaguely nutritious before all the candy...and the boys thought I was really cool or making them a big bowl of popcorn. Sometimes simple is the way to go.

We had some friends from the suburbs join us as we left the house and we then we walked the kids until they were dragging their wheels pretty slowly. We stopped at the neighbors who always have a smoke machine, the famous neighbor who used to play in a major rock band, the neighbor with the yippy little dogs and the neighbors who always hand out full-sized candy bars...a whole covey of fabulous characters. Then we crashed back at the house and handed out the rest of our candy reserves to the last of the trick-or-treaters and the boys went to sleep with sugar glazed grins, and they were asleep as soon as they hit their pillows.

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Halloween of Yore...

It was a great Halloween. I called it the best one in our memory as a family although A said that he thought we'd had others just as happy and full of cheer. I may be a child of the moment, only really remembering what I just ate or maybe it really was just that fabulous. Who knows.

I was a gardener (I had leaves and sticks in my hair) and Nib was my yard gnome. The big boys were both firemen of course.

There was a wonderful dinnertime open-house costume party at the next door neighbors. The grown-up wore costumes, even if they didn't have little kids, there were lots of homemade get-ups and everyone was very warm and jolly, grinning at each other and swapping stories over the pizza and caramel apple dip. At exactly the right time the party disbanded in a whirl of glitter and feathers and pretend noses....and we all took to the streets to wish each other a happy autumn, make introductions, hand out candy to each other's children and kick our way through the leaves on all the sidewalks.

Here's a neighbor at the costume party who was also a gnome. So funny to see them together!

Dee collected lollipops on his rounds saying when asked what he'd like from a basket or bowl "I like lollipops." and then carried them in bouquets all over town. They didn't go in the bucket...just in the hand.

A said that it was truly surreal trick-or-treating...crowds of people out halloing across the street and parents back slapping each other over their children's costume choices and neighbors passing out glow-in-the-dark bracelets for all the small ones trooping down the street. Such a fabulous sense of community and togetherness and warmth and trust. I am won over, completely.

A is a careful and studious carver and spends a good bit of time on his creation every year. This year he was carving swiss cheese holes in his pumpkin to make a gleeful Sponge Bob.

And here are all of them on the porch: Mommy, Dee, Daddy and Ru...four in a row.

Our pumpkins we carved were wonderful this year too. No botched slips of the knife, very warm and cheery glows and I'm cooking them down today to make them twice useful. Pumpkin pie, here we come!

All Hallows Eve

Well, costume construction is in full swing and we are all stocked up (I hope!) on candy to hand out. I hear we live in a whiz bang neighborhood for Halloween celebration and so we're hoping we don't run out of sweets on our first run.

The boys waffled and wiffled about what they wanted to be. Ru was stuck on being a ghost for a while, (more on that in a bit) and then then he was thinking about Spiderman and then he decided once and for all the a fireman was the thing. Dee talked about Batman at first and then began insisting that he was going to be a doctor "in pink" whatever that may mean. Ru corrected him all the time, "You mean a nurse. They wear pink. Do you want to be a nurse? Is that what you mean?" (Which I thought was hilarious...not pink is for girls but, pink means a nurse. Kids are a riot. I love child logic.) And Dee would reply confidently, "Nope. A doctor. In pink." So, I was all set to dress him in pink scrubs and a white lab coat and then suddenly he decided that he wanted to be a fireman too. Ru thinks its great fun to be twin heroes and we have had more new declarations so today the supplies were purchased and assembly began. Firemen it is.

About that ghost business. I wasn't sure what to do with the whole ghost bit. I grew up in a family which forbade dressing as anything remotely mystical or devious so a ghost would have been out of the question while A's family was all for the creepy and the scary as that was somehow part of the night. I think two things give me pause,

1.) I have a hard time personally enjoying "dark" characters and decorations. I am pretty black and white and scary is icky and happy is good...and I'm not very able to enjoy the creepy or the foul.

2.) Really. I have very small children, one of whom is already up EVERY SINGLE NIGHT with nightmares. Do I need anymore darkness in his life? I'll pass.

So, I'm not sure exactly what to do with the whole topic ultimately. In some ways I think that forbidding my children to ever take part in anything that isn't puppies and rainbows, all innocent sweetness all the time is a bit strange. Life is dark and light, scary and hopeful...death is real, bad guys happen....etc. That said, I'm not sure I want my little boy dressing up as the ghoul either. It somehow really unsettles me. I really would love to think this whole topic through more thoroughly and think I'll try, (Anyone for a good verbal hash-out on the subject sometime? I'd love to try to tease out the issues involved.) but until then, with the limited mommy brain cells I have available and the short amount of time left until the holiday itself I decided to tell Ru that maybe I'll change my mind at some point and I'd love to keep talking about it, but at this point I wasn't willing to make any scary or icky costumes. Only good guys allowed.

The other piece of the holiday that I feel bears some weight and should be addressed is the church holiday business. I know that our Reformed brothers and sisters celebrate Reformation Day at this time of year and I've heard of families posting Luther's 95 Theses on the front door as a thought provoking reminder. In our church this is the time that we celebrate All Saints Day...a time to remember those who have gone before us and to bear in mind what a great historical tradition we are part of. In some parts of the world celebrants spend special time remembering their family members who are dead and gone and/or beautifying the family plot in the cemetery. I just love this photo from Poland, via Wikipedia...all candlelit beauty. So peaceful and warm, not how you usually picture a cemetery at all. We don't have any family members who were buried here, but we can light some candles here in our home, maybe on the porch and of course certainly in our pumpkins. And I plan to print out and hang a symbolic picture of Christ and the saints and talk together with the boys about those who have gone on before us.

While I mused, I enjoyed reading the following two articles on the topic of Christianity and Halloween. The first, from a pretty mainstream believer, talking about how important it is to seize the chance to interact with our neighbors in a loving way. I love that and also the notion that the whole country plays dress up together for one night. Those are both lovely things. The second article is from a Greek Orthodox believer who talks about the origins of the holiday and the oft recited notion that it has sinister Celtic roots. I always love debunking and I also appreciated hearing his ideas on honoring the saints and interacting with neighborhood children on the topic.