Something to remember in 2008: never leave a toddler alone with a blue, non-toxic marker. Even if she is strapped in her high chair, she still will pull the marker felt tip out of it’s plastic encasing with her teeth.

Last night at a wedding, we sat next to the dance floor as the father and daughter took their first dance. In the past, when I have witnessed this, I’ve been reminded of my own father and my own wedding and my own closeness with him.

It was enough to make us hold each other closely as we took the dance floor with the other couples a few songs later. It was enough to make us whisper and let the rest of the party blur as we talked about our own journey. It was enough to make us wonder what the next two decades hold and who will win the hearts of own our little girls someday.

My father wrote me a letter recently, and in it he sentimentally named me “little one“. I am turning 33 and he still called me little one. As I have my own family now, our relationship with its natural ebbs and rises has developed into more of a friendship and mentorship than anything else. But this tender name helps me to remember that he was an adult when I was a baby, and he has lived much more of this life than me. It resonates with me and makes me think about my own little ones.

Little ones have little hearts that are easily crushed, but quickly mended with the right affection and kindness. Little ones have believing minds and moldable thoughts and their trust can be simply broken. Little ones are vulnerable and need protecting; they need their big people to watch for danger.

My little ones are all of these and I quite often forget that I was once a little one. And as my father reminds me, I still am. I am still in need of kindness and a mended heart. I still need my trust in others fulfilled and I am often exposed and unguarded.

I still remember being little. I remember the things that worried my tiny heart and scared me in the dark. I remember feeling the loneliness that is inevitable in childhood and the sting of hurtful words. I remember needing my parents and not being able to fathom life without them (I still can’t). I remember my comfort rituals (arranging my animals and dolls on my bed at night, sleeping with my one special stuffed dog). I remember the hate-love-love-hate feelings that sisterhood brings. I remember missing my family if I was apart but enjoying a piece of independence at the same time.

I remember this, and I cannot forget that my two little ones are just the same. I should not interfere with my daughters’ comfort rituals even if I don’t see the value in her stuffed dog sleeping in its own pillow-house by her bed. I need to take the time to recognize the “littleness” of my girls and the tender places in them. There is no need to toughen them; they’ve been created soft and the world will bash them around enough when they are older. They are my little ones that I have been given to protect.

Thank you, Daddy, for reminding me that I was once a little one, and in your eyes, I still am. You have helped to remind me of the softness and tenderness of my own two little ones.

California is the proverbial West. It means West: the Pacific Beaches, the Coastal Ranges. It IS the West.

But we still have the sunrises that burst over the eastern hills. It was the East that made me lace up my running shoes this morning to try to catch it. It was the East that woke me up today.

And I run East when I run up the hill, and over my left shoulder, to the North, are our local mountains, this morning shrouded in fog and leftover snow from last week. My horizon is covered by hills, so by the time I actually see the sun (and not merely the brilliance of its reflection), it is high and mature.

The notions of East and West are difficult for a child looking at a globe. The East goes around and then goes around again, somehow always being East and never West. And the West does the same.

And I think of the One who tells me that my wrongs are as far as the East is from the West. I try to catch the East in a morning jog and I never will; my futility is evident in my slow stride and heavy legs. But I am revived today knowing that not only will I never catch the sunrise, but I will never again know those same wrongs, the ones that are hidden from me in the East.

Someday, she will carry the weight of embarassment or the struggle of stress on her little shoulders. Not this week. She is almost two years old and it is Christmas.

Today I was able to watch my little girl’s eyes light up and hear her giggles collide with all the other young giggles in the theater as we watched her first and my first production of The Nutcracker. The sweetest thing is that I saw this for the first time with my little girl. I’ve always wanted to see it since I was a little girl and now I was able to share it with her.

I certainly wasn’t as wiggly as she was in the second act, but we both laughed as the Mouse King died in a comical way, and both were in awe of the ballerinas on their toes and the jesters’ acrobatics. The Russian dancers made her laugh as did the little mice whom she sat up straight in order to see.

I watched a little girl who wants to spin and dance on her toes yawn with the Sugar Plum Fairies’ as the music began to make her eyelids heavy. She would lay her head down on my lap for only seconds, then pop back up so she wouldn’t miss anything.

Looking over at her face that is becoming older each day, it is reflected in the lights of the stage and I see wonder in it; I see a little girl’s dream of leaping high on toe shoes. I see her take in the music and the beauty of the ballet.

And as we drove home later and she fell asleep, I couldn’t help but wonder if she dreamt. She might normally dream of galloping horses and open fields of green, but tonight, I wonder if she dreamt the same dream as Clara: of Snow Queens and Nutcracker Princes, of Spain and of Russia, of mice and fairies.

After a week of green cornflake wreaths, lamb costumes and graham cracker houses, I think everyone is ready for a break from Kindergarten.

Writing nearly everyday for almost six months has me accustomed to desiring the discipline of quietness. The only environment in which my words are born is a calmness of heart and spirit. It isn’t the hearing nothing that I need, but the latitude to have peace and rightness in my heart. I’ve become used to watching and studying this life.

So now, after writing for something like 165 days in a row, I’ve come to need this quiet time, this time of contemplation.

I usually find it when I am running, which is why I think, I have to do it. I need this time to reset my heart and my thoughts. I depend upons my runs for this.

I can’t always find it. This week, for example, I had so many things to accomplish that it seems like I fell asleep sometime on Sunday and woke up this morning. Most every minute was accounted for in some way and I just did all that I had to do. I just did. But I slept, it seemed. I didn’t watch life carefully like I have been trying to do. I didn’t take extra time to laugh hard at the cartoons my girls like to watch over and over again.

So maybe, this weekend, tonight even with nothing planned, I might find the quiet and the peace. Maybe I will see inside my husband’s words and try to understand my toddler’s cries. I might take time to be the student of life that I love to be.