A toast.

Here's to 2011, the year our baby started walking, talking, and going to part-time preschool. The year I traveled away from the boys for work and managed not to have (that many) mental breakdowns. The year we settled into life as a family, not just the Emergency Survival Mode of life with an infant. The year of mountains and beaches and unscheduled hotel staycations.

Here's to the blessed quiet of our cove--occasional fireworks excluded--and the fog that, as Carl Sandburg put it, "comes on little cat feet...It sits looking over city and harbor on silent haunches, and then moves on."

Here's to growing hands that look a little like my mother's, a little like my great-grandfather's, and a little like mine, always busy, always curious.

Here's to neighbors with a sense of humor, who turned the summer's storm destruction into Mr. Stump. He wears a new hat for each holiday, and this is his New Year's party attire.

And here's to a boy who, even in his toddlerhood, is equal parts dreamer and doer. It's a privilege beyond my wildest dreams to see all the things he comes up with, and I can't wait to see what 2012 holds.