10:00 AM DST. Sunny, 30°F. Morning soundtrack is www.magnatune.com. Mom is knitting her first gauge swatch in preparation for the Big Knitting Project, and drinking a single cup of coffee with cream and sugar. Little girl is fingerknitting a scarf for her brother, but takes frequent breaks to Heely through the house. Little boy is eating tortilla chips and vitamins, waiting for math to begin.

Julie held a free yoga class for kids at our library today. It was wonderful. She was wonderful. I walked into the library with two kids and walked out with two relaxed, limp noodles.

Laura Lucia Roberto Anderson born March 20, 1918 died March 15, 2010 * *Her nickname was Ruby. She and my grandfather posed for this picture after Mass one sunny Palm Sunday on Long Island. Maybe they stopped by the bakery on their way home that day. I imagine my mother and her two brothers riding in the back seat of the car, holding their buttered rolls and watching the buildings blur through the windows.

We gave up a family bed when our youngest was about two and a half years old. By that time we had been sleeping together in one bed as a family since our oldest was first born, four years earlier. We loved our family bed, but each one of us was quite ready for some more sleeping space, our own comfortable area in which to stretch out and rest without being under direct threat of flailing limbs and pinched tresses. I didn’t sleep a wink the first night we slept in our own big girl/boy beds, but both children did. And they woke up with smiles on their faces. ...

Looking at these pictures helps to remind me of the truth I discovered on that trip: that in a life filled with choices, I need to use every minute wisely. I need to choose between broad and narrow, life-bringing and life-taking.

A cold Sunday afternoon with friends. We caught some serious air on the jumps, Jack. We sledded until dark, and then fifty percent of our family fell asleep in the car on the way home.

This summer slipped away in a steady trickle of words and deadlines, graphics and proofs.

I know I reeked of cigarette smoke. My second-hand pants were inches too short, my hair was pulled back into a messy ponytail by a 48 year-old father new to single parenthood, and my nails were bitten to the quick. But that Santa pulled me in tight anyways and hugged me close, and he smelled of cinnamon, and butter cookies, and reindeer feed.