L. got a cool NASA calendar for Christmas. But, when it came time for me to sit down and update our family calendar, I realized that we didn't have a new 2012 one. We keep our family calendar hanging in the kitchen, where we can all see it, and add/amend it as needed. I went on a search for a new 2012 calendar, and found L.'s NASA one buried under some books on top of his dresser.

"Hey L.," I said. "Would it be okay if we used your NASA calendar as our family calendar?

"Sure!" L. said generously.

Before hanging it up, I flipped through the pages to see the photos. I thought about the blank expanse of months; the square, white blocks of space that would, increasingly, be filled up with events, appointments, reminders, teacher workdays, in the days, weeks, and months to come.

When I got to December I stopped.

Someone--L.--had already written something in the block for the 21st. My heart did a flip-flop when I saw it.

The End of the World.

I don't know how to convince L. that it won't happen; that the world won't come grinding (or exploding) to an end on that day, at some particular hour.  For every fact I offer, L. has a counter-fact; for every science-based website I send his way, he finds another discrediting it. The world won't end in 2012, I tell him, over and over again. At least, I hope it won't. But if it does, just look at that great expanse of time we have: months and months of neat, square blocks to fill.

Carpe diem.

Have you seen these things yet?

T. got a few in her Christmas stocking, and it was the first time I had ever come across them. Generally speaking, I am leery of tiny collectible toys that are so difficult to keep track of. Fortunately, T. hasn't ever really been interested in Polly Pockets, and the Squinkies thing? She can take it or leave it, she said. But she clearly enjoyed playing with them for a few days, until they disappeared. Our neighbors across the street confirmed that all the Squinkies their girls had received for Hannukah had also mysteriously disappeared. Gone to Squinkie-land, perhaps. There must be some children out there who are so careful with their tiny Squinkies that they put them away as soon as they are done playing with them. But I would venture to say that most kids  probably quickly lose track of them. They are, after all, really, really, really tiny. 

The Squinkies, are cute, I admit. But I hate the way the website immediately separates by gender. Click on the link above and you can then choose Squinkies for girls on the left, or Squinkies for boys on the right. The Squinkies for boys seem super-cool: those tiny little soft plastic Matchbox cars are much neater than the soft plastic princesses and animals. T. thought so, too. Of course girls can buy the Squinkies for boys, and boys can buy the Squinkies for girls, but the message, when toys are marketed that way, comes across loud and clear. For once I'd love to see a popular toy product that's marketed for boys and girls alike--none of this pink, frilly princess business for girls, and superheroes and cars for boys.

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A friend called me yesterday. “Have you prepared the kids for going back to school?” she asked.

Sort of, I told her. Psychologically, at least. Maybe. About a week ago we began dropping little references about school into our conversations with L. We let him know how many days of vacation were left—almost a week, at the time we had the conversation. Yet although L. claimed to be happy school would start in one week, I could sense waves of anxiety rising off of him at the mere mention of it. I have spent eleven plus years tuned into this child; there is little, I think, that slips past me.

It’s okay, I told him. We still have lots of days left.

But I could feel him shutting down, withdrawing, even as I spoke the words. He’s pulled his shell in close; it’s been impenetrable. He piles his books around him at night, and reads over the same pages in his Star Wars visual dictionaries, over and over again, his mind finding comfort in the same old pictures and diagrams. Around and around his brain goes, treading along that safe groove. I despair, for the thousandth (millionth?) time how we will help him learn—if not to embrace change and transition—to accept it and to function well within it.

I've always found New Year's Day to be a bipolar sort of occasion, marked by extreme opposite ranges of emotions all crowding in for time in the spotlight. Even as a young child, I always felt both the thrill of a new year and the weight of the passage of time. I remember being awed and saddened, too, by the idea that one year was gone forever. I was often, on New Year's Eve, kept awake by the thought that a new year awaited, stretching out ahead like an empty patch of ocean, and that the familiar landscape of the poor old year, with all its bumps and glorious parts, had receded away into the distance.

It didn't help matters that this New Year's Eve, L. slept with a heavy pipe wrench in his bed, to ward off maruaders. He's been worried about all the 2012 end-of-the-world business for quite some time, and was in an anxious panic.

Even though I am, by nature, a positive-minded person (at least I like to think I am), I also go through my days keenly aware of both the sweet and salty sides of life--the joyful and the bitter, the two-sidedness of every experience--especially as a parent. I've often written about how each exciting, monumental milestone along the road of your child's development--that first tooth poking through a pink gum, the first bow-legged tentative steps, the first words, the first of everything (because there is NOTHING like being a parent and getting to witness the unfolding of life firsthand) has always a backside to it, like when you find the most unexpectedly perfect pastel and ivory shell at the beach, one side worn smooth like silk from the waves, and then you turn it over and see the rough outside, dark and scratchy, and maybe there's a barnacle or two clinging to it.

Every year for Christmas, I buy at least one book for L. and T. They love books, and it's not difficult to find one to please them. When I was growing up--and well into my twenties--one of my favorite parts of Christmas was getting a good book or two and spending those lazy, quiet days post-Christmas curled up on the couch by the fire, reading. I thought about those days when I watched L. seated on that same couch, absorbed in the new Steve Jobs biography, and when I happened upon T., on another couch, reading this book:

When I shopped for books for the kids this year I happened upon A Life Like Mine and I knew it would be perfect for T. She gobbles up all books--but lately non-fiction books about other children in other parts of the world, and she is fascinated by history and other cultures. She's our budding anthropologist-in-the-making. 

And I love this book! The table of contents is divided up by each child featured in the book. T. likes to read the blurb about each child, and then turn to the corresponding page with their story.

The book not only teaches about the lives and traditions of children all around the world, but it has sections on nutrition, education, and a fascinating section on how children with disabilities live in other cultures, and are treated in schools and communities.

When the kids tumbled out of the van and into my parents' house, with the usual chaos and excitement and pent-up energy after 6 + hours in the van (I think this was the first roadtrip in many that passed so peacefully--no bickering, no meltdowns from L.!), they converged around the Christmas tree, as they do every year, soaking up the look of it, and lifting the lids of cookie and candy tins, just as they do every year. I love watching my kids rediscover all the things they savor about Christmas at my parents' house--this is the best part of the trip for me. L. especially appreciates the now-routine rhythms of the holiday around here--the predictability of what he will find. He gets his own room at my parents' house and it's an added bonus that the same room houses my mom's iMac computer, and plenty of space to spread out his visual dictionaries. 

Scott and I have been working away at a long to-do list this week. We made the most of the three days the kids were still in school to do lots of wrapping, and last-minute gift buying, and organizing the odds and ends that always go along with Christmas. On Thursday we were all home together, and I had cookie baking on my to-do list. Cookie baking--at long last! What I did not have on my list was taking both kids in to the pediatrician. L. has been complaining of a sore throat for a couple fo days now, and T.'s sinus infection, which clearly didn't clear up after the first round of antibiotics (that terrible round that resulted in her allergic reaction--she still has some residual hives from that!), has come back in full swing. Since we are traveling for Christmas, the thought of hitting the road with sickies in tow just wasn't at all appealing. Plus we were worried about spreading any serious germs to our family members--especially to my baby nephew. Luckily, both kids have only non-contagious sinus infections, so we'll be packing antibiotics with us and they should be feeling back to themselves by the weekend.

Once we had crossed the pediatrician off our list, T. and I turned to cookie making. One of our favorite cookies to bake at Christmas are stained glass cookies.

I veganized the recipe and used Ener-G egg replacer and Earth Balance, and the dough came out perfectly fine. I chilled it overnight, brought it to room temperature in the morning (while we were at the pediatrician) and working it with my hands a bit before rolling helped.

Before you start baking, put the hard candy in ziploc bags, cover with a dish towel (place on a wooden cutting board, too), and turn your older child loose with a hammer.

L. had a presentation due yesterday in one of his elective classes. He doesn’t talk about schoolwork much (if at all) but he let slip mention of the upcoming presentation a few times these past two weeks--that's how I knew it was big. One time last week he asked me if he’d be in school that next Tuesday.

“Of course,” I answered.

“Great!” he said. “That’s the day of my presentation.”

We didn’t know much about the grading standards for the presentation. It’s an elective class, and all work for electives is supposed to be done at school. He’s been excited about the presentation, though, and I know this is why he wore his red and gray striped sweater on Tuesday. I have tried several times to talk to him about the content of his slideshow he prepared--on global superpowers, but he made it clear he had the topic covered.

When I picked him up after school yesterday I asked him how it had gone.

“Bad,” he said in the same non-commital, even-toned voice he uses for so much else. He's my inside-out child: disproportionately emotional and dramatic over light upsets, and even-toned and flat over the things that really matter. Yet I knew that under that flat tone he must have felt upset. I thought, not for the first time, how much easier it is to comfort a child who is visibly hurt and disappointed; you see the tears, you fix them.

His presentation had “too many words” the teacher had said, and not enough graphics. You could have done better, he said the teacher told him after class. What does that mean? Done better? How?

“It was boring,” L. told me.

“How do you know?”

“Because students did this” (here he made a loud groan) “and this” (he sighed heavily).

In my continued efforts to cheer up T. (she stayed home from school on Monday) I came home from work and we made these cupcakes, and T. licked the bowl clean. By 5:15 the kitchen smelled heavenly. At 5:30 a friend came by to check up on us. She sniffed the air. "Your house smells divine," she said. Then,

"How's T.?"

"How's Scott?"

"How's Willa?"

"How are you?"

We're all in recovery mode around here. My bronchitis is almost all cleared up, Willa got her stitches out yesterday, and T. soldiers on, waiting for the hives to dissapear. Scott tells me Willa was very brave at the vet. She has to wear her snazzy special collar for another week, just to make sure she leaves the incision site alone. But she is so much happier now that she's pain-free and on the way to becoming fully mobile again. We didn't have any doubts about whether she needed the surgery, but if we'd had even just one tiny niggling one, it would have vanished now that we see what a difference it has made. 

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On Thursday the kids and I pulled up in the driveway and found a young squirrel dragging its hind feet. I had seen him earlier in the day, but when I went to track down a box to put him in, he had disappeared. When we came home there he was, unnaturally still despite our presence, bright-eyed, but because of fear and pain.