Run.
Write.
Listen.
Be kind to Jeremy and the girls.
Be cheerful and competent at work.
Have dates with my girlfriends.
Count my blessings.

As this year winds to its ignominious conclusion, I am defiantly focused on the things in my life that I am happy about. These include but are not limited to Claire, growing like a weed, gap-toothed, volatile, brilliant and charming; Julia, rose-lipped, wide-eyed, white-haired and implacable. Jeremy, muscular from wushu and still as funny and even-tempered as ever, continues to put up with me despite my cranky shenanigans. Australia is beautiful, my favourite beach golden and opal, the air full of sunshine and birdsong. Mangoes here smell like childhood and hope.

We still have all four of the childrens’ grandparents, and fine grandparents they are too. All siblings are likewise present and accounted for, and most are happily pair-bonded to boot. My niece and nephew Kelly and Ross are delightful and intelligent and obviously closely related to my own daughters. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is a bit wet, but he’s no John Howard, and for this we are all extremely grateful. Similarly Obama, while under more pressure than any one man should have to bear, has shown an enviable track record of steely nerves, and his cabinet appointments are thoughtful and encouraging.

The world is full of books to read and films to watch, meals to make and eat, music to hear and play, science museums to explore, valleys and forests and mountains and beaches to hike and camp at and loll upon. I’m glad there is a Kiva.org and a Human Rights Watch and a Medicins Sans Frontieres, a St Luke’s Hospital and a Monroe Elementary School. The same Pacific washes Sydney and San Francisco. The same tide that washes my past away carries me forward into my childrens’ future.

I brought all my summeriest clothes and it is overcast and a bit cool. But we had a memorably splendid Christmas. The girls were up at six and their presents were opened by seven. The clan Fitzhardinge assembled in Pymble for a bang-up lunch of cucumber soup and cold cuts and sweet chili jam and glazed carrots and potato salad and greens. Claire got yet another birthday cake, and then the sun came out and I lay on Aunty Jan’s lawn to absorb its healing rays and listen to the rosellas and the cockatoos.

The childrens’ behaviour has been delightful for days. I cannot imagine what’s gotten into them, but it’s making me beam inside.

J: There are birthday presents for Claire, and supplementary presents for Julia so she doesn’t get jealous.

R: What if Claire gets jealous of Jules not getting jealous? It’s so hard to keep it fair! What was I thinking having a baby on Christmas Day? Why didn’t anyone warn me?

J: There should be books. Although the obvious authority is useless.

R: “I did what it said in the Bible!”

“And the star guided three wise men from the East to where the baby was lying there in the hay.”

“MAMA I KNOW THIS STORY ALREADY.” *eyeroll*

“I don’t think you know all of it. The three wise men were called Sandy, Pigsy and the Monkey King. Sandy was a fish god, a god of the ocean and death. Pigsy was a god of earth and appetite. And the Monkey King was the Great Sage, Equal of Heaven. He was an air spirit.”

“What’s an air spirit?”

“Listen. The three kings brought three gifts for the baby. Pigsy brought gold, which is a gift of earth and the body. Monkey brought frankincense, which is a gift of air and spirit. And Sandy brought myrrh, which is a gift of water and death.”

“Why?”

“These are the gifts we give the people we love. We look after their bodies and their spirits, and we then take care of them when they die.”

“Oh. Okay.” Long, pensive silence. “Daddy? Did you fart?”

What a year, eh? I have resolved to stop whining and start Counting My Blessings again, which should as a happy side-effect help repopulate this somewhat neglected blog. So! The kids are shiny. Claire has been promoted to first-in-line in her wushu class – a Chinese martial art, think weaponized tai chi – and is onto her second book in piano. Julia got the memo about turning three and is stubborn and stormy, yet still irresistibly kissable. Even the cat is mellow, it being the season where she views me as a heat source as well as potential food. Jeremy is 38 and thus officially the oldest dude I have ever got happy with. We had a spectacular meal at La Ciccia to celebrate, all the lovelier in that we got to walk home afterwards.

I’m nervous about going back to Australia because it always throws me into tailspins about What Might Have Been; but I’m also looking forward to some summer and beach and proper mangos and coffee and such. And I can’t wait to see everyone and wear my brand-new rock star sunglasses. And then when I come back we’ll have a new preznit, one you won’t necessarily want to throw your shoe at. Pacific gyre and methane clathrate gun and we’re all so doomed aside, as they say here in California, it’s all good.

Boston, then New York, then San Francisco briefly, then Las Vegas, and now back in my darling San Francisco again. So tired I can’t write or think or parse Spanish or make connections or keep more than two things in short term memory. Claire has a tummy bug and a fever. She is asleep with her hot feet in my lap. It’s so good to be home that the very thought of it brings tears to my eyes.

It’s been a while since I blogged about The Girls And Their Awesome, which is odd and lame of me, because Their Awesome is Very.

Julia is experimenting with language. “I missed Daddy,” she said the other night, in an emo moment, clearly meaning the present tense. It’s a direct search-and-replace from what I always say when I see her after work: “Julia! I missed you!” Other idioms of hers are translations from the Spanish. “I want much milk!” she says. “Mucher and mucher!” Jeremy pointed out that this was a literal rendition of “mas” and “mucho.”

My relationship with Claire is a little stormy at the moment, Claire’s experiments being in the area of defiance. “No!” said Julia to me last night during one heated exchange: “no shout at my sister!” She’s right, of course. She’s also extremely well-mannered. If I photically sneeze, she and I will volley: “Bless you.” “Thank you.” “You’re welcome.” “I love you.” “I love you too, mommy.”

Ah, Claire, my volatile, stubborn, brilliant, fabulous rock star. She and I butt heads continually. I would take a bullet for her in a heartbeat and I believe she’d make an excellent president, but does she have to be SO IMMATURE? The other night she went into full meltdown because I had given her ice cream in a blue bowl, AT HER REQUEST, and ignored her followup request to disregard the earlier request, take the orange bowl away from Julia and give it to her, Claire. She went to bed without ice cream, rather than back down! I HAVE NEVER WITNESSED SUCH SELF-DEFEATING FOOLISHNESS except, of course, obviously, my own.

Did I mention brilliant? May I brag? No? I will anyway. She had a catch-up piano lesson one Friday, in which she learned a new melody; by her regular lesson on Sunday, 36 hours later, she was playing the duet with Renee. She lazily corrects my awful Spanish and instructs me in Important Facts. (Actually Julia has picked up this habit as well: last night I made the obviously unfounded claim that we live on planet Earth. Julia pointed out that we live in our house, while planet Earth is in space, and can only be reached by going UP UP UP UP.)

God, they crack me up. Claire picked up Arthur and the Comet Crisis at the library. There’s a passage in it in which a computer notes that the comet will destroy the earth, and adds: “Have a nice day!” Claire thought this was beyond hilarious, and has been reading it to anyone who will stand still long enough to hear it. She has inherited my bleak sense of humour and taste for apocalyptic science fiction! Good times, good times.

When the alarm goes off before sunrise every morning, groan, they jump into the big bed with me and the cat and I hug them as tight as I can, looking down at their dear heads, one strawberry-blonde bob, one puff of white silk. My daughters, my daughters, my daughters; I never dreamed I could possibly love anyone so much. Mucher and mucher.

J: Jules is so much in the family tradition. I put her to bed. I go back later to find her surrounded by books.

Monroe Fall Fun Festival: games, prizes, decorating sugar skulls and cupcakes, mini golf, bowling, a haunted house. When it was described to me I thought “okay, fine,” and I turned up mostly because I’d volunteered on the lollipop tree.

It was astoundingly good fun. The weather was shiny and beautiful, and the girls ran from booth to booth with cries of delight. All the other children were doing the same. Halloween came early: Principal Jen Steiner was a purple butterfly, Claire was a green fairy and Julia was a ballerina. It wasn’t even as sugary as you’d think. I am pretty lenient with respect to cookies and cupcakes, and the sugar skulls weren’t for eating.

I have girl-crushes on all the women in the PTA. They’re all Barbara Pym characters, practical and kind, and will be played in the movie by Judi Dench. The whole day had the feeling of a church fete except that instead of loading up the children with guilt and shame, we’re trying to get them to college.

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Originally uploaded by Kathy_Ramsey

One day Martha will rule the world. Remember, you heard it here.

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Originally uploaded by Goop on the lens

That dog is eight weeks and three days old. He was beset by adoring children for about two hours. All he did was kiss them and wag his little knuckle of a tail. Chouchou, you rock.

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Originally uploaded by Goop on the lens

World’s sweetest toddler meets world’s sweetest puppy. Everyone in range dies of teh cute.

We walked along the beach again as we have done a thousand, ten thousand times. The grey sky glowered. Sand scrunched between my toes. Cold waves pushed up and over our feet, all salt and foam. Wave succeeded wave like shaken-out bolts of silk. We wandered back to the car, teasing and jeering, lost in the parking lot.

“Where is Claire?” he said. I looked up, startled. And suddenly it wasn’t Alain, my childhood’s constant companion. It was Jeremy, and I had forgotten the girls, and I was racing back to the rough water’s edge and praying “Please please please…”

My distress woke me up. I lay, heart hammering, in my quiet room beside my sleeping husband. The sky over Noe Valley was blushing indigo and orange.

The girls, I knew, were safe in their own beds.

I have made myself a responsible adult because I love my daughters as I love sunrise and the sea.

But some small part of my soul is still twelve, with my brother, on a beach.

Julia and I are having a love affair. She will gaze deeply into my eyes before declaring, “I LOVE you mama,” and kissing me on the lips.

The other day Blanca left when we were in the bath. Jules was disconsolate upon finding her gone. She said:

“I am sad because Blanca went home and I miss her.”

Are two year olds supposed to construct perfect sentences with two conditional subclauses? Just wondering.

Julia: Mummy’s mad at me!

Jeremy: D’you know why?

Julia: Yeah. I spat.

Jeremy: Should you go say sorry?

Julia: Yeah! I’ll be right back.