merry christmas

Wishing all of you a Merry Christmas!  

angel

Our red-sneakered, very stage-shy, tinsel garbed angel managed to make it on stage for her first ever sunday school Christmas pageant this weekend.  Though she cried her eyes out during dress rehearsal, she ended up loving the whole experience.  She danced when she wasn't supposed to, and watched the show with her back to the audience when she was supposed to be performing.  Classic.

waiting

If there's one thing you learn as a parent of a preschooler, it's this: delay exciting news.  Over the past couple weeks I've found that A just can't grasp the idea of time enough to understand why it isn't Christmas today.  Talking to her about how many days until we go see family, or celebrate Christmas day, or (worst blunder ever) get to open the secret present I have hidden for her - it's all just asking for frustration as she proceeds to beg "but pleeeease".  Further evidence that time is just a big muddle was hearing her say, as she pushed her dolly in a stroller, "We're going for a walk to Christmas and it's only one hour away!".  My mom-in-law gave me a bright idea to make a countdown for A where she gets to visually see the waiting time grow smaller.  It was also a fun project to work on together (she helped me "write" the title ... clever girl).  Later I rearranged the mittens to make a countdown, rather than a count-up ... but the numbers only matter to me anyway.

Ten days until Christmas!!  Are you ready?

wonder

Look up, little baby.  Take it all in.  Your whirl-around sister in mismatched stripes.  The twinkly tree with all it's lights.  Your own feet, if you can find them.  This is a pretty sweet season and I'm so glad you're here.

dot-to-dot

It's kinda feeling like homestyle preschool around here since Avery's caught on to the fun of connect-the-dot drawings lately.  She's been big into writing fake letters of the alphabet, so I figured it'd be fun to start teaching her how to shape real letters - but really she's just doing dot-to-dot so I won't quite stamp "genius" on her forehead just yet.  That's bound to bite me in the butt sooner or later.

After each letter she cheers for herself - yahooo!  It's been a big week for accomplishing big girl things and she's so excited about it all.

Look at that - C-A-T.  Hello genius!!  I love the extra details she gave this cat.  Eyebrows, an extra eye, an extra mouth.  Love it.

happy faces

... or just plain goofy.

nutcracker

Avery and I have been watching snippets of the Nutcracker ballet together over our quiet afternoons.  She loves watching the ballerinas and it usually inspires her to find her pink fluffy skirt and slippers to twirl around in.  It's been years since I've seen the ballet in person, but I have such sweet memories of going with my Mom to the local theater's production of the Nutcracker and feeling so special.  I ordered a Nutcracker storybook this past month to add to our Christmas book collection and give Avery a little taste of something I love.  She's been pouring over the pictures and all the sweet details, spending long times sitting quietly with her book, and that equals successful book purchase if you ask me.

This is the spread that won me over.  I don't think this book is the best as far as illustration or writing, but I do appreciate that the author chose to include ballet in her re-creation since it's the ballet and the music that make the Nutcracker memorable for me, more than the story itself.  

Happy first of December!  Sweet sugar plum dreams the whole month long.

just baby

Some "just because" shots ... because she's six weeks old, because we're not doing anything at all today, because it's snowing and cold and the perfect day to strip down your baby just for fun (??), because she's just so sweet and kissably soft and I have to share her a teeny bit.

tannenbaum

We decorated our tree over three days this weekend.  It's funny how busy we feel even without leaving the house much.  I usually savour the process and cling to perfecting the spacing of ornaments, even to the point of kicking Levi to the curb.  But this year I brought up the boxes and told Avery to open them up and see what she would find.  It was so sweet to watch her face light up at each new ornament (or "ordament").  She merrily clogged the bottom right corner of the tree, which Levi and I discretely rearranged later - and it was much easier to release the control-freak in me than I thought it might be.  She's just so sweet!

She got her one Christmas wish to put the star on top.  She was determined that we shouldn't have to wait until the very end and kept asking us until we were both ready to snap ... and then in the end she was too frightened to be lifted up so high and chickened out.  

I love the cozy lighting of the Christmas tree in the evening.  Happy first week of advent as we remember the hope of the awaited Saviour, the hope for today, and the hope for his coming again.

playing around

We've been doing a lot of playing around these days.  Avery's imagination is taking off like wildfire.  She hops in and out of imaginary scenes and activities all day long, sometimes too quick to keep up with.  She skates on frozen ponds, buries food like a squirrel, makes cakes at her bakery (and once chocolate dumplings -yum!), exercises with her "flexer machine" and cools off with imaginary water.  She even controlled Levi's singing tonight by fiddling with an imaginary sound board, making it louder then quieter with various knobs and switches.  Where does she even get that from??  She plays with her solid toys really well, too, and flits around to different activity choices all day, making big messes everywhere she goes, but at least she's happily occupied (right?).  Loves her kitchen and dishes, her dollies and softies, her lego and leap-pad, her books and painting and drawing, her dollhouse ...

Absolutely anything is subject to becoming animated like little people.  She'll be coloring quietly, only to eventually realize that her markers have become little girls that have a lot to say to each other.  She also introduced us to the first children that have shown up in the invisible, a boy and a girl named Lisa and Boy.  The cutest naming she's provided lately, though, is a little white bear that was gifted to Ella by one of our college friends.  Avery named him Jesus.

Levi and I have been playing around with a new toy of our own this week.  We'd been talking about trading in the camera we recently bought for the one we were originally really interested in (a Nikon D3100 DSLR) and decided to go for it.  We were originally scared away by the price, but that was when we assumed you had to buy multiple lenses, which you don't.  Now that we've had the new one in our hands for a week we've been really happy with the quality and have found it easy to get comfortable with quickly.  We'll sell the old one and consider it a fair trade!

Littlest girl isn't playing around as much as working hard at growing and getting stronger.  She's eating like a super star, sleeps really well, doesn't need much cajoling to go down for sleep, hates tummy time (but look at that head starting to raise up!), and the best thing of all - she's started to show us glimmers of her first smiles!  Love this baby girl!

sprinkles

 Say hello to the new Sprinkles spokes-girl.  

Edit: Hi Frieda - I used this icing recipe: 

1 1/2 cups icing sugar (add more to thicken)
1 tsp butter
Cream or milk to thin (add more to thin)
Drops of food coloring, if desired

little things

:: For the first time in a long time I'm hearing reports of others putting up their Christmas trees before me.  I always feel like I jump the gun and then feel a little silly when my curtains are open.  This time I've held restraint, and now I feel a little behind.

:: Against my determination not to, I've signed up at Pinterest.  It seemed like such a black hole of inspiraiton that I thought I had to stay away (I'm an inspiration addict).  But now, as I'm beginning to reduce the hundreds of saved bookmarks in their hundreds of bookmark folders and subfolders (and so on), it's making a lot of good sense.  To justify my time already sucked into the void, I made something.  Not sure how I'll feel when my vision of redoing all my Christmas ornaments doesn't happen, not to mention matching sister dresses for Christmas ... or those adorable felt trees and peppermint garland and advent countdown.  Breathe ... and let go.

:: I suppose I have a pretty lovely reason to use as my "pass" and not make a single thing.

:: My days are actually starting to feel a tiny bit more manageable and organized.  On my to-do list for a few weeks has been to bake sugar cookies with Avery (with new Christmas cutter-outers) and then decorate them another day. We tackled part one today during Ella's afternoon snooze and Avery had a ball rolling in flour up to her elbows.  It was really good to have some one-on-one time with her.  I find myself saying "not right now" way over the good mom quota these days and some days I feel so bad about how little time I've spent doing something with her.

:: Of course, finding my days becoming more manageable doesn't necessarily mean I'm acing everything on my to-do lists.  It's all about prioritizing, and today sugar cookies beat out hair combing.

:: Thank goodness for Levi because if I didn't have him in my life I wouldn't be learning anything.  As I type, he's filled me in on why we have wisdom teeth.  Ever wondered that?  I didn't ask ... this is just what happens on a regular basis.

wish list

We're starting to put on our thinking caps for what we'll make and give for Christmas gifts this year.  Feels like time is already whizzing by.  I was curious what Avery would say if I asked her for her Christmas wish list and this is what she came up with:

A couple candy canes to eat for a snack
A couple crunchy things … for a mouse
Stars
A dolly… a cherry dolly
Some castle toys
And a thingy that has the button on it that makes noise
A star on top
A couple airplanes
Some couple bags to put the airplanes in
I want to do an email on mine-self
And some bouncy balls to bounce-bounce
Some couple babies
And some blankets for them
And some cars

I quizzed her again while we painted together and asked her what she'd most like to see under the tree for her at Christmas.  She made it easy on me and said she wanted a ballerina dolly and agreed that I could wrap up the same one I made her for her birthday.  Wouldn't that be memorable?

All this one wants for Christmas is to be snuggled up and never put down.

one month

Ella is one month old today!  

snuggle