Merry Christmas Eve! It’s snowing and Santa is on his way! Glad tidings of comfort and joy!

This week we passed through the longest night for the year. Today we tromp on the frozen tundra of our friends’ Bellingham backyard and soak up the sunshine! We share a beautiful family dinner. We arrive safely home. Moments like these carry us through the winter darkness.

Lady Bird, written and directed by Greta Gerwig, delivers on light vignettes that weave a rich emotionally laden tapestry. She does it in a fresh elegant way, without beating you over the head with it. Christina “Lady Bird’s” (Saoirse Ronan) senior year of high school skips along at lightning speed while we witness up close a lot of landmarks: first kiss, First Love, first sex, joining and quitting clubs, cliques, friends, connecting with mentors, and going off to college. Her particular brand of confidence and vulnerability, openness and resilience, are inspiring.

It’s semi-autobiographical so thank you Greta for mining your joy and your pain to share a deeply moving film with us. We saw casts come and go, and while broken bones were healing hearts were breaking and healing too. There were sobering events and hilarious scenes. My husband and I were on a date night and we couldn’t stop laughing during one somewhat non-sequeter scene. Coach took over the drama club from Father and delivered an uproarious game plan.

Ultimately, it’s a family drama paying homage to the bittersweet complexities of the mother-daughter relationship. Just in time for the holidays!

In addition shouting No! with gusto, Lake has taken to stotting. Leaping up off the ground with both feet in the air at once. Gazelles do it on the savannas of the Serengeti at great expense of energy. It is thought that maybe stotting behavior is an evolutionary advantage of “showing off” for the ladies. Lake does like to impress the ladies, as well. Perhaps his stotting aids him with his other favorite pastime: kissing!

We here at the VanLaanen Huis are gearing up for the eminently approaching “changing of the guardians”. It’s going to be such an incredible and bittersweet transition. It’s three weeks away now. It doesn’t seem real yet. It’s happening though, and the plane tickets are set. Even so, it seems completely surreal. After one year with us as the VanLaanen Au Pair, aka Lake’s best friend and social organizer, it’s nearing Jo’s time to move on. Jo will be leaving early on January 9th and Luisa arrives late on January 10th.

Luisa will be our family’s new Au Pair, coming directly from Germany via a few days of Au Pair orientation in New York. Thankfully Nana will be spending the week with Lake during this transition. Luisa will have time to get settled and oriented and recover from jet lag. We are very excited to welcome Luisa! She is also from Germany, southern Germany, near Freiburg. Lake will be continuing his German education sofort!

You may be wondering,

How did this changing of the guardians line up? Is there a story there?

It is a story of effort and surrender. A story of hard work searching for just the right fit and of meticulously combing Germany. A story of letting go of Jo and of the looming deadline. And in that pause between the inhale and the exhale emerged Luisa in the final hour… Lake’s up and coming guardian angel.

Lake is expanding his vocabulary at an ever increasing rate. It’s a maelstrom of German and English words, and lately it seems like there’s a new one coming every day or every day twice a day. Today he has several handfuls has in circulation:

Ich

Mama, Dada, Nana, Jo

Cat, meiu, woof woof

Uh oh

Nein, no, uh uh

Ja!

Hi, bye, tschuß

Heiß, hot

Hat,

Up

Shoes

It’ll be a new surprise every day. He’s so open and loving. Fearless, curious, friendly, resilient and with a sense of humor.

And I think his favorite word, which he employs for subtly different meanings in a variety or circumstances, is “No!”

Baby loves Grandmas, and Grandmas love Baby! Baby loves having Grandmas visit! And Grandmas love visiting Baby! This weekend we were blessed with both days a Grandma visit. Saturday afternoon Grandma Julie visited. They had a great time exchanging presence.

And Sunday Nana visited! Lake and Nana had fun playing with the felt tree that Auntie Kendra made by hand and shipped down from Ketchikan. The felt ornaments stick to the felt tree or Nana’s fleece!

We walked down to View the Christmas lights with our cousins after dinner tonight. It was festive with lots of traffic, both vehicles and neighbors out walking. Our favorite house turned out to be just off Candy Cane Lane, “Off Lane” so to speak. There were reindeer dogs. What can I say?

This Thursday December 21st is Pedestrian Night. I recommend it if you’re able to check out this quaint neighborhood phenomenon near Ravenna Park in peace. Look for the Grinch and the igloo where Santa is hanging out, (hiding out?)! It was a the perfect topper to a perfect day. I’m glad I could spend it with you!

Lake found his wheels tonight at University Village play area! We have a pretty strict no single occupancy vehicles rule enforced for Lakes play things. School bus, airplane, ferry boat, okay, otherwise its mostly books and cats. Necessity breeds innovation… tonight he tapped into car sharing.

The City of Seattle hosted their annual Pathway of Lights at Greenlake tonight. We participated in the walk around Greenlake in the cold and dark bedecked with twinkling blinking Christmas lights.

It was a festive event, very well attended and worth bundling up for. There were lots of families out with kids, babies and dogs. There was one phosphorescent jellyfish. There were even a flock of lit kayakers.

If you missed it tonight, mark your calendar for next year: it’s always the second Saturday in December. The entire 2.8 mile pathway around the lake is lined with beautiful luminaries: actual burning candles inside paper bags. These thousands of little glowing embers of summer lined up to stoically carry us through the winter solstice period. We felt invigorated by the celebration of darkness and light and Lake seemed by turns delighted and content in the moment.