Green(ish) late autumn

My brain is all over the place lately. My odd jobs, the coming holidays, a certain handsome young man who has decided that sleep is not integral to his functioning…. he remains toothless, but I am pretty sure that one morning we will wake up and there will be some outrageous number of teeth in there, like seven teeth. Although the been there, done that part of my brain reminds me that I am foolish to try to gain any understanding about the sleep of a young child. He will sleep well eventually. I will enjoy that day. In the meantime, I’ll try to enjoy those quiet moments together. Actually, I don’t mind the quiet moments… it’s the day after those quiet moments that is so challenging. But onward and upward! Here’s what we are up to this week.

1. It’s the first week of the Dark Days Challenge, where we’ll be making one meal a week from totally local ingredients. I’m currently planning our meal, which we’ll be having tomorrow night. I’m excited by this challenge– I’m changing the rules a little (they have a 150 mile radius, for example, and I want to include all of Maine, some of which is farther than 150 miles away from me. ). I’m trying to focus on what I can still get fresh around here, and save my canned and frozen food for later in the season.

2. Yogurt. I finally made some, by this method in the crockpot. I just wrapped it up in an old fleece and hopefully it will be ready around bedtime. Report to follow.

3. Advent. We’ve started our family observance but I’m looking for some new ideas to add this year. Any thoughts? I was just reading Mama Gone Green, who made darling Advent owls for her family, each filled with a family activity… I was thinking about something like that (although not as cute, of course!) .  I want to make an Advent calendar out of baby socks, eventually (so many unmatched socks in this house)– I think I might integrate family activities, specific things to pray for, a few donations and add that to our family ritual. Now, we light the candle, read a Bible story, say a prayer, sing, and then open a picture calendar and a chocolate calendar (the last two things won’t start until December).

I’m reading Holidays to Holy Days with a group at church, and coordinating a sort of experimental online book group for it, which I think is going to be neat. I’m enjoying the book and I think I’m going to get a lot out of both the real life and the online groups.

4. I’ll have an article at Sparrow Magazine this week– lots of good things to read in Issue 1 and I am sure Issue 2 will be more of the same. I’ll post a link when it’s up– it’s about simplifying with children. Speaking of which, I did feel like at least some of what we are trying to do has gotten into the kid’s heads tonight. We were having a discussion about Santa and Adam said, “I would like to send Santa something. And maybe we could send him something we don’t use any more, and he could give it to someone who needs it.” Editing to add a link to my piece here.