Another picture-less post, I think.

Today was the big day, the Virgin Mary day. I had the Virgin's eye view of everything, including pounding feet dangerously close to me and my Jesus and whose underwear was peeking out of their leotards as they were rolling across the floor in costume. It was an amazing experience, though. The house was packed for the sold-out performance, and the show this year is phenomenal. I'm not saying this because my daughter believes herself to be the star of this show or because of my own divinity in it--it's a mind-blowing, expectation-exceeding celebration of the power of dance. I exaggerate very little when I say that when you see this show, you will laugh, you'll cry, you'll find yourself bopping in your seat and reassessing whether you're too old to take up salsa or ballet or jazz. You will sing Andrea Bocelli for weeks. The Company there makes dance look both breathtakingly athletic (a fact that I'll admit has often been lost on me in other dance performances I've seen...) and accessibly doable. This is just really accessible dance...it draws you in. I wish I could spread this gospel to everyone I know!

Melia, who was Jesus, is 6 months old, and Oh My Jesus, was it divine to hold a baby for almost two hours! She was perfect for the first act--googly and gurgly and captivated by the lights and activity in front of her, if a bit, um, sweetly popcorn smelling with her breastfed-baby poop in her diaper. She spent most of the time fooling around with a small spoon with a purple rubbery cover over the bowl and at our most visible moment, waving around a Tweety-Bird rattle, something I doubt the original Jesus did. But I think this is okay, since yesterday's Mary was chewing gum through the show. The job of the Virgin Mary in this show is to sit. People dance raucously in front of her (making it a very real question whether Mary is permitted to kind of rock out with them, since it's hard to not feel the beat, or whether Mary is supposed to behave as if in a stable in Bethlehem 2,008 years ago). She could make eye contact with the audience at times. She could peek toward the wings to see if the baby's father was still there. She could gaze in love for 2 hours at her baby, which is truthfully what I'd be doing if I just gave birth to this 6 month old in my arms.... I did a combination, sometimes bopping a bit to the music, sometimes watching the dancers and smiling, gently stroking the head of my baby, and trying to keep my "newborn" quiet and calm. Melia, for her part, let out some happy shrieks, cried a little and had to be replaced with a fake baby for 30 minutes before being returned to me as a "gift" from one of the members of the procession, and then was able to take her bow in the front of all of the other performers. I don't think she questioned too much where her attention should have been up there.

A Frances-ism:

* (we're driving in the car, just the two of us) "How do you think that God was created?" I try to craft some answer, taking into account that maybe she's not looking for deep theology or wanting something too complicated, about how He just kind of "Was", he wasn't created. And she interrupted saying, "You know what I think? I think it was probably like in Barbie Mariposa, when there's this sprinkling of all this glitter and swirling sparkles and then there was the fairy. I think that's the way God was created."

We ate the grossest gummi soda bottles today. Absolutely foul. Who comes up with this stuff?! On the plus side, I had a real moment of pride in Frances. I was at the self checkout and couldn't find the scan code for bulk candy on the computer there, so I asked Frances to run over to where the candy bins were and see if she could find a four-digit number on them and tell it to me. I expected nothing. Truly. And she did it! It bothers Walter and Ollie to no end that she still basically gets to unschool, but here's some proof that maturation happens all by itself.

Ollie and Walter both read their book club books for this month, Key to the Kingdom by Garth Nix. I don't like the name Garth Nix--it sounds like the name of an author that would just not appeal to me, and I know that probably the only thing worse than judging a book by its cover is judging a book by its author's name (whose last name is Nix, though?). But they both seemed to like the book. And I'm proud of them for reading it with some pressure in 2.5 days, when I know it wasn't a book that they were originally very excited about. Before that, Ollie had just finished _The Ghost's Grave_ by Peg Kehret and two days before that, _The Prince and the Pauper_, a book that he seems to have absolutely loved. Funny comment: "I think that Mark Twain is a really good author and everyone should read books by him." It must have been the way that he said it that struck me as funny, because it had a tone that suggested he didn't know that yes, this is a wildly popular writer and has been for a little while.... Tonight I started reading _Red Badge of Courage_ aloud. We had listened to it on CD a little while back, and they didn't want to finish it, even though it's pretty short. But they're getting into the Great Illustrated Classics version. It's a timely choice because they are going to Pamplin Historical Park at the end of the month for a program on the Civil War. I'm wondering how it's going to compare to Gary Paulsen's Civil War book for Ollie--also on the mixed feelings of a very young person who finds himself in a tough and frightening circumstance. Independently, Ollie is rereading the Book of Three. I'm not much of a re-reader myself, but both Ollie and Walter do quite a lot of it. Chalk it up as many different kinds of readers, I suppose. Walter's still on his Great Illustrated Classics binge--6 new ones for Christmas.

Final thoughts on New Years' Resolution: No need to achieve all of them (or start to do it) on January 1st. It's fine to start working on a resolution at any point, right?! So mine is to curb, if not end, what I refer to as "spillover." That unpleasant phenomenon that you are probably familiar with if you've read this blog over the past few months: where the vessel that is my brain and schedule-manager simply overfills and starts pouring stuff out of the top. I don't feel, like many do, that the hole is out the bottom. It honestly feels to me like responsibilities just can no longer fit and off they go. So anyway, I intend to wear a watch, to carry my calendar constantly, consolidate to simply one calendar and not a print one, one on the computer, and "I'll check in my email when I need a reminder", and never, never succumb to that uniquely non-employed occurrence of totally losing track of what day of the week it is. Commit to less. Prioritize more. Ask questions when I have them. Hide it better if I screw up. Carry more in my car at all times to hedge. And did I mention obsessing about my physical calendar more? Add this to my "No Fines in 2009" library resolution, and it just may be a Whole New Nancy!