Countdown to Winter

In the middle of this, the longest night of the year, I am finally now getting a chance to share with you some of the ways we have been anticipating the Winter Solstice this year.

Our "solstice mittens," as they are called by the kids, have been hung for the third year in a row, and yet again we've used them differently than we did in the past. The first year, we used them to disperse small prizes to the kids (really just Luke and Jaz at that point). When that didn't end up being a great experience, we changed things up last year and used the mittens (which are actually a mix of miniature hats and mittens) to hold daily message cards. Each card would say something about a project or activity we were going to do that day. But, still, we found that even with the cards, there was too much room for disappointment with the mittens. The last thing we wanted to do was to up the level of angst in the kids. So, this year, we mellowed things out even more.

I hung the mittens in the doorway between the living room and the dining room, and the kids simply moved a small stuffed animal bird from mitten to mitten (or hat) with each passing day. There was just about no room for drama, and yet for some reason, this activity was still a small daily excitement, even for Luke and Jaz, who can clearly remember the days when the mittens held much more excitement inside them.

These pictures are not of our traveling stuffed blue jay who has jumped all the way from day 1 to day 20 so far, but rather of the many small wooden animals who gather around the toy solstice tree each December. They were just hanging out in the solstice mittens, giving me some ideas for next year, and I thought they looked cute.


I did elaborate our wooden toy solstice tree set-up this year to include--of all things--a sun! I used one of the kids' circular tree blocks, and simply painted it yellow and drilled a hole through it before hanging it from our chandelier.

a wooden sun

all the animals,
gathering for the sun's birthday party

Additionally, we have been preparing for the Solstice by reading lots of books about winter. One of my favorite traditions growing up was the basket of Christmas books that my mom would set out just before the holidays. And thus the tradition lives on in our house, though without any reference to Santa or baby Jesus. Some of my most favorites: Winter is the Warmest Season, Snow, Waiting for Winter, and Winter Lullaby.

Lukas, reading "Snowmen at Night"

And, of course, we have our real solstice tree. We got a pretty tiny, tabletop version this year because there really wasn't room in our pretty tiny house for anything bigger. Zeben is most enamored with the tree, and is constantly taking the animal ornaments off to play with them and rearrange them. Everyone--each one of the animals--gets a turn at the top.

Happy Solstice To All!

Happy Birthday to the SUN!