Happy 2012!

I've been feeling a little glum lately. The holidays are stressful even if your cup doesn't overflow with parties, and the end of the year presents an opportunity to look over the past year.

The past year, overall, has not been one of my best. My freelance career went south. We successfully sold our house, but the fact that our carefully chosen, trusted realtor was a dual agent and seemed, in our admittedly biased view, to favor the buyers (staying in town and a possible reference to others moving out of the city, as opposed to us, moving across the country) left a bad taste in our mouths. We left our beloved adopted hometown, leaving 7 years worth of friends, friendly acquaintances, and family (not to mention friends who had become family). There really is a unique bond between friends who have raised their children alongside yours.

We moved across the country to a place that my friend Elizabeth correctly pegged as "Mars." The houses are different, the flora and the fauna are completely alien. The sky is huge and oppressive (but the sunsets are mind-boggling). The preschoolers learn letters and their sounds and counting to 30. (Lucy attends one of the few play-based schools out here.) Folks have kids about a decade before we did. It was 120 degrees during our first month here, and the day I typed this, January 2nd, it reached 87 degrees in the San Fernando Valley today. We needed sunblock on the second day of the year.

But the kids are doing okay. They miss their friends desperately (Lucy has been calling her new friend here "Audrey," which breaks my heart) but have all made valiant attempts to make new friends and acclimate to their new schools.

My husband, when one discounts the fact that he perpetually frets about our finances, my lack of work, and my general sanity, is doing great. The short commute suits him, although he misses his time on the train to read and watch movies. It helps that he meets a couple of our kids and I for lunch almost every week. He is genuinely valued at his job and it seems like he has a real career track out here. Every day he comes home mired down with impossible deadlines and office politics, but he is also excited about the content and breadth of the new company and his current position in it and possible future one. Plus, he looks really cute in his new office uniform of expensive fitted jeans and overpriced novelty tee-shirts or bowling shirts, as opposed to his old uniform of button downs and chinos.

I have a couple of holiday posts (Disneyland! My parents! Christmas and Santa!) but I'm going to surge ahead here and post about New Year's.

New Year's Eve was on a Saturday this year. That meant that Oscar and I did our Farmer's Market trip on a holiday. I'd say that half the booths took the weekend off, but since we hadn't been there in a month, I was thrilled (and Oscar was, well, attentive) to see our old friends. When we got there, the egg line was easily 20 people. We did our sweep, bought gorgeous spicy-mix salad, some sad tomatoes, some yellow raspberries that were like biting into sunshine.

Bacon avocados. Do you think I bought some?

Oscar and I also bought one of these weird fruits. The guy said we should eat in in a week, when it is soft and ripe. We haven't touched it since, but Evan and I have been devouring his clementines, 3lbs for $5.

When we made our way around the market, we lucked out. The egg line (which is usually 30+ people and I make Oscar stand in line while I suss out kai-lan and gigantic hunks of ginger across the way) was only a few people. We have recently tried to stuff Oscar with protein for breakfast and it seems to help his attention span. So I scramble a lot of eggs and feed him a lot of leftover steak and chicken for breakfast. We have gotten into the habit of buying eggs at the farmer's market -- $2.50 for a dozen organic brown eggs that taste better than any egg you've eaten. This day, I had planned on buying a flat of eggs (20) instead of our regular dozen. Oscar chatted with the egg lady as she tied up a flat of eggs for the people in front of us. But they had a sign:

FLAT OF DOUBLE YOLK EGGS $5

Now, I don't know about you, but for my family, a double yolk egg is good luck. (I am also old enough to remember cracking eggs and finding chicken fetuses within, before they figured out factory farming. But it means that like my mom taught me, you cracks an egg into a bowl, checks it out, and then pour it into the main bowl. Since Arlo is my Main Man Egg Breaker, it's been a tradition that has been very useful in the next generation -- we pluck out shell fragments before dumping them into the main bowl.)

But a flat of eggs with double yolks! Done.

I posted that picture to Facebook and my cousin Karen immediately called out double yolk eggs!

New Year's Eve. We had a special Family Movie Night and watched The Rocketeer. Lucy is obsessed with it now. I needed to sneak into her room early this morning and she woke up, cuddled with me and said, Mama, I love the Rocketeer.

3/4 way through the movie, it was New Year's in NY. For the past couple years, we hosted an Italian New Year's Eve party. We invited a bunch of families, they came over around 5ish. We had a ball drop and confetti at 6pm (New Year's Eve in Italy, natch) and then tucked into prosecco, sparkling cider, and lots and lots of great Italian food. We couldn't top last year when we went for broke and had a good 60-70 people, but we toasted the New Year in NYC with Cava for the grown-ups and orange juice-selzer cocktails for the little guys.

Sigh. I miss my peeps.

New Year's Day! We decided a while back to have an open house that would also serve as a housewarming. My darling friends (and Lucy's godparents) shipped us six dozen bagels from Sonny's Bagels. We have been out here for six months, and I have made some pretty passable pizzas. But I haven't had a bagel in six months.

These bagels were worth the wait.

We all helped to make Loretta's famous chili egg puff, and to prep for the party.

Arlo cracks a million double-yolk eggs for luck for the New Year.

Oscar shreds (and eats) a pound of Jack cheese.

The Goose straightens the silver.

Our open house was lovely. So much so that we have no pictures. We didn't have a lot of people, but some old friends and work friends showed up and some new friends from preschool as well.

The next day is our last day before everyone needs to go back to work and/or school. We could have another day where we putter around the house, or another day where we hang out at the LA Zoo. But we decide to get off our fannies and make our way to the Santa Monica beach.

Arlo was super duper crabby. He had a temper tantrum on the boardwalk that actually made a woman stop and I could see that she was getting ready to deliver a lecture on childrearing. Luckily, we got them snacks.

All the kids were still amazingly crabby at this point. They wanted to go on the rides, they wanted to play the games. That all ended once we brought them down to the beach.

It was still early and we watched the fog roll off the pier.

My child-rearing philosophy is based on two theories: When in Doubt, Go to the Zoo. (from Elizabeth Redwine) and When in Doubt, Go to the Beach (from Robyn Brody-Kaplyn). It was our last day of vacation, and we Went To The Beach.

When we first got to the beach, I realized we had planned badly. No extra clothes, no towels. So we took the boys' pants off and hoped that their boxer briefs would suffice as trunks. After a while I rolled up their sleeves, and then finally I got practical and stripped them of everything except their European Cut underwear.

The kids were, in a word, ecstatic. Lucy eventually joined the boys. I have never seen my kids so happy since we moved here.

This was their first time in the Pacific. They've been in Cabo before, but our "home" there is on the Gulf side, and every time we've been on the Pacific side, the surf has been too rough for the kids. So seeing our kids playing in the our "new" oce surf on the second day of the new year? Perfect.

We took a break and went to a stupid chain for lunch. Luckily, the boys were able to have lots of novelty drinks:

If I thought my kid was "special" I wouldn't be putting it on a tee shirt.

We tucked away lots of fried food and told the kiddos that they could have two rides. And it worked!

Two rides, some ice cream and a clamber on a sculpture later and we were done. We made it home with no fights and no screaming (and in 25 minutes!). Oscar got a chance to Skype with his best and oldest friend, which was needed since none of his friends came to the open house and he needed some love. We fed everybody and got them to bed kind of early.

And now it's 6:35am and I have two sleepy boys to rouse, coax into eating protein, dress, and send off to school. I'll try to post the Disney/Christmas pictures later today.

Here's to 2012. I hope it is full of wonderful days like the one we had at the beach.