Almost without warning, winter is upon us. We knew it was coming, Maxim has been anticipating it for weeks now, but now it is here. It is right on schedule with the new month. We decided, at Noah and Maxim's insitence, that we ought to put lights on our house. It takes more than you would figure - more than I did figure. After two trips to the hardware store, we had the unbiquitous icicle lights around the bay window and an outline of lights on the front door. "The upstairs windows look too dark." Marcela said. Two more boxes of lights and now the top has illumination, but I haven't photographed it. It's a slipperly slope; on the way home from the train Friday I wanted to buy two more strings of lights to outline the windows on the bottom. Marcela had better sense and insisted we just go home. "This is going to be the best Christmas ever," Maxim said when I told her I was going to put up the lights. She has no idea how funny that sounds coming from a four year old who only vaguely remembers last Christmas. I stood or laid out on the bay window roof to attach the lights, and Maxim stood inside the bedroom window, asking her run of questions. "Are you scared, Daddy? Do you feel like you could fall? I would be scared. Can I come out?" "No. Stay in side." "I don't think I would be scared. Are you hanging the lights, Daddy? How are you going to light them? This is going to be the best Christmas ever." The weather has certainly cooperated so far. Today, as Maxim awoke remembering she would be going to the Nutcracker in Boston, she looked out the window. "Daddy! Snow!" "Look Daddy, snow!" Noah mimicked. "It's really covering." All day long it fell. Not heavy enough to cover the still-warm asphalt roads, but certainly in volumes to cover grass and trees and soil. Maxim, Marcela, Gordon, Marie, and Gwen left for Boston just before noon. Noah and I stayed around the house, ate some lunch, wrestled, took a bath, and now he's down to sleep. He's grown in leaps and bounds these past few months. He speaks with clarity and in complete sentences. Last night at Esperanza's birthday party, he walked into the room where Esperanza's aunts and grandparents were chattering loudly and said, "Hey, be quiet! We're trying to watch a movie." This morning when I was walking around with the digital camera he said, "take my picture, Daddy," and posed with this piece of blue plastic that he found in Esperanza's toy box yesterday. "Thank you," he said when I showed him the picture. The other day when I was sitting at the piano he came into the living room and said, "I want to play, Daddy. Let me play." I gladly put him on the stool and he gently plunked the keys, one or two at a time, making a suprisingly nice sound. We, of course, praised him. He jumped down from the stool, "I'm done. Your turn, Daddy," and left the room. The big excitment this weekend, however, was Maxim's and Gwen's first dance recital. They dressed in black leotards and red and green skirts, they put on make up and danced in front of a full middle school auditorium. Each of them had a number with their class and then they got to be together during the finale - "Jingle Bells." After the show we went out for a late dinner and the girls danced some more in the middle of the restaurant to the great amusement of the Friday night customers. There are busy weeks ahead of us as the final days of 2005 wind down. Two weeks and three days until the winter solstice and longer days begin to set in. Four weeks until the first day of 2006 is upon us. Maxim, of course, can't wait until Christmas. Which, for her, will be the best ever.