I wish everyone the best for their holidays, whatever they are, whatever combination of traditions are meaningful to you in your home. Enjoy these days, this cozy end of year. Stay strong, stay grounded. Take time for yourself. Figure out what the end of year means, what these traditions hold for you. Reflect on the bigness of life and on the specialness of the small things, too. Say no when you want to, say yes to what you desire.

Everyday Mom will be taking a small break. I'll return toward the end of the year. Warmest wishes and hugs to all.

If you haven't seen Brain, Child mag's new website, head over to their fancy new website. Tons of stuff there.

And Literary Mama editor Shari MacDonald Strong has a new blog, eponymously named Shari MacDonald Strong. She's got a wonderful writing voice, so check it out.

What a lovely day was had at our home today. It was indeed Amelia's one year birthday, and she began it in fine style by sleeping late. Our older daughter, of course, woke us early, because apparently there weren't enough toys in her bedroom to occupy her imagination, not enough books, puzzles, games, paper, and nor was the guinea pig chatty enough. No, Mom and Dad needed to be woken. The baby slept, though, which gave us a chance to bake some corn bread, since we'd decided to make her a breakfast birthday party. Just our family. The traditional birthday hat. Some great presents and the all important shiny bows to play with. All that, three loving family members, and a piece of cornbread with a candle in it.

After all, morning is her good time.

That was that. I call it the best birthday ever. We had a mellow day. No muss, no fuss. A walk in this continuing glorious weather, nice enough so that the neighbors are out and you can walk from block to block sure to run into someone you know who wants to chat. Lots of time to reflect on this crazy busy and also mellow year, on this new life with an eight year old and a baby, on the ups and downs, the illness, the love, the frustration, the good work done, the feelings of life working well, and life not working at all; all of it, a good day. I've emerged from two weeks of computer hell with a newly working machine, and all the technology upgrades I needed to upload the video clips of Amelia's year. I was able to really see her changes, and was shocked, actually, to see the how she really was a chubby healthy baby at four months, and a sick and skinny one at six, and then, happily, to see her look so much healthier as the summer wore on. Thank goodness she's okay.

In the late afternoon the girls' grandparents came over, and their aunt L, laden with presents and good cheer, and they brightened up the end of our good day.

Best of all, Amelia had a wonderful time. She loves her new caterpillar rocker. She's figured out that a special wrapped something has an interesting thing inside, whereas she'd never before been aware of the idea of a present. She pulled herself along the outside of her crib, cruising a foot or two.

Time goes so slow and so fast. I cannot believe that Amelia will turn one this Saturday. It's nice to have a quiet moment, just now, while she sleeps, to think about it. First birthdays are special times for mothers, and for parents, it's that time when--I remember from the first child--we get to take a breath, realize both we and the baby made it through a year. The baby doesn't have friends yet, well, my baby doesn't have friends yet, so it's not really a celebration for them. I know some families do the "first chocolate cake" ritual, though since I have a strong memory of Samira, daughter #1, not tolerating cake quite well, I think I'll skip that. And presents? I wonder what presents mean to a one-year-old, I wonder when babies learn what it means to receive something new. I've never been one to have a strong narrative about "what babies do." Some people have this. You tell them that your child is eleven months old and they say, oh, yes, they must be going through special attachment. Me, I'm the type where whatever they do seems a big surprise, and I don't remember it in order. I remember fragments of my first daughter's young years, and I'm neither a parenting expert nor a child development aficionado, so when it comes around again, it's all new. So will she know it's her birthday? We'll find out Saturday.

At times I wish I were more prepared with a story line. Mostly though, I'm in love with the surprise. And I've learned this year that while sometimes the normative baby story lines are helpful and reassuring, they don't help when your child jumps outside them. I still have body memory of driving Amelia to the hospital last July, sent there by a concerned pediatrician, to figure out why she had lost two pounds. I'd always taken for granted that my children would be healthy, since Samira always was. This time around, six months in I'm confronted with the shock that not all babies are well. I'm so thankful that mine made it through, and with something very treatable (for new readers: Amelia has some reflux from her bladder). Each night after diaper changing she gets two milliliters of an antibiotic, and she will for years, as much as I'm against such treatment in principle.

So, what am I learning about life, with this baby in hand? The first time around, I worried more generally, about things I can't control, like, will my daughter have friends, will she have open options, will her world be nurturing, will she emotionally thrive? Eight years in, the answers are yes, and I'm confident that as parents, we have the skills to do the same for baby Amelia. This time, I've learned how to lose the big concerns and worry more specifically: will Amelia's bladder valve heal in a few years, or will she need surgery? Will the antibiotic keep working, and if it doesn't, will symptoms of infection be silent, as they were before, or not? Will we catch an infection before it hurts her kidneys? These are new questions. I marvel at their specificity. Still, as a parent, I don't know, even in retrospect, which kind of worry, the general or the specific, is easier.

Forget extreme sports, the phrase of the week is extreme jobs, coined by the Hidden Brain Drain Task Force of the Center for Work-Life Policy. Extreme jobs demand 60 hours a week, and they meet five of a list of ten elements, like deadlines, fast pace, responsibility for profit and loss, lots of travel, and lots of work events outside normal business hours. Thanks for the report on these by Lisa Belkin, "Putting in the Hours and Paying a Price," in her NYT column Life's Work, a favorite of mine. These jobs are "the American Dream on steroids" and it goes without saying that they're especially hard for parents and kids. This new report pushes the business world to consider what's lost when it pushes people to work this hard. It also acknowledges the thrill of these jobs: money, interesting colleagues, excitement. Can someone figure out how to get us exciting jobs in twenty-five hour-a-week packages? I know tons of men and women looking for them. Life's Work reports on another report also issued recently, by Catalyst, the organization that pushes businesses to expand opportunities for women at work. They've done great work in raising issues about mothers and all parents in the workforce. Their new report is available as a download from their website, is about Parental Concern about After-School Time, or pcast, admittedly is not a very catchy acronym. It's important, though. I know so many mothers, in particular, and some single dads, too, who work at lower paying jobs so they can have the flexibility to pick their kids up at school and avoid paying for aftercare. And, I know moms and dads who  spend lots of time organizing playdates, pickups, shuffling their time, and basically worrying their way through what to so with their kids after school, since they work till 5 or 6. Not good for moms and dads, and we all know that worry isn't good for kids either. So yay for Catalyst's attempt to publicize this problem, and for their proposed solution, more scheduling flexibility and as they call it, "the agile workplace." Well, reporting on this sends me back to my own agile workplace, also known as a desk in an unheated cubbyhole at the top of my house, and back to a long to-do list to complete before the babysitter leaves in two hours. On my agenda once the work is done: planning a one-year celebration of our baby. Can't believe we've had her for twelve months already. Birthday parties are not my most favorite parenting activity. They make me nervous, and I haven't had the time to figure out why. This time around, let's hope it's different.

Sometimes in my life as a mother, where days go by too quickly with too little done, and I wash too much laundry, and change too many really dirty diapers; or on those days where by a hair I keep my cool through a day when the kids are particularly crabby, but am fried after, literally spent from the effort, I need really great literature. I need classics like Homer, or an excellently emplotted novel with six expertly drawn points of view. I need something that lifts me out of the day-to-day tedium of it all and reminds me of the grandest visions of life. This keeps my head above the parenting waters when I need it.

On other days, I need writing that is less grand. I've never been a writing snob. Sometimes it's Henry James you need. Sometimes it's the latest issue of Real Simple, or last winter's Fine Gardening, with essays on how to crate a moss garden, landscape trees, or create a cutting garden. There are days when I need literature that recalls the world outside the four walls of my home and the two bodies of my children, and there are days when what I want is something that reflects my experiences of being a mother and a woman. In these times. Now.

A few weeks back, writer and poet Jayne Jaudon Ferrer sent me her new book of poems, called She of the Rib: Women Unwrapped. Her website is one of those small treasures of the internet. Today when I clicked over, the opening paragraph was about whimsy, and here's what she had to say:
The book contains some poems in a similar vein, like her Ode to Friday: O perfect day!/O perfectg day!/A day that dawns so fair!/O blessed day at end of which/One can let down their hair. That's along side more serious reflections on turning forty, death and loss (They were going to grow old together, but, suddenly, one is gone and the other is alone.)

What touched me is the way she's got the big right in there with the small, until you can't really tell the difference. The small and simple pleasures of life are worthy of words, worthy of being marked in their passing, too. Jayne calls it "reality poetry," and I'm happy to introduce it here.