tawbubby

Unseasonably warm temperatures today in Richmond. The girls went for a mid-afternoon walk.



(And, yes, that outfit is a polka dot jacket over a princess dress over pajama pants).

Grandma taught Amelia how to decorate Christmas cookies.

Before bed, Grampy helped Amelia and Daphne lay out reindeer food so that Santa’s reindeer would know where to land.

Tomorrow’s the big day! Amelia insists that Santa knows she’s been good.

She’s trying to climb in…

Don’t they usually try to climb out?
Taking a little nap while I got ready this morning.

Daphne kept yelling “Where’s Mommy?” and “Close the door please!” while Amelia did a great fake snore.

Daph takes a step stool around the house so that she can climb up on things more easily- as you can see in both of these pictures.

Last night we went to the Christmas party held by Daphne’s therapists’ group.  The girls wrote letters the night before.  Amelia immediately walked over, handed him her letter, and climbed up on his lap to chat.  This was as close as Daphne got by her own free will.

Which meant that Santa had time to read Amelia’s whole letter with her.  That was super neat.

Her letter:

“Santa,

I asked my teachers nicely for graham crackers.  I helped Daphne to reach her cup, and I hugged her.  I helped to feed the dogs ten times.  I cleaned some play kitchen.  Please can I have a Cinderella play set and a magic wand?  Merry Christmas!

OOXX Amelia”

He said “I’ll see what I can do.”

She told me the words to write, and she wrote the ‘Santa’ and the ‘OOXX Amelia’.  I look forward to her writing her own letter next year.

After all the other kids saw Santa, we tried again with Daphne.  We got her to the arm of the chair. She touched his beard and it felt funny.  This is her reaction.

Amelia’s face is great too.

Daphne’s letter, as dictated by Amelia:

“Dear Santa,

I said ‘Thank you’ for my milk.  I cleaned up all my books on Saturday!  I like blue and milk and singing songs.

Love, Daphne”

Daphne, most of all, loves Christmas lights.  This is her third Christmas, and she has loved them every year.  Now she yells “Christmas Lights!” whenever she sees them.  “Christmas lights over there!”  “There more!”  We stopped by one of the tacky-light-tour houses on the way home.  The highlight was not the lights, but a stray cat that lives in the front yard of the house during the Christmas light season.  The owner said the cat has come for the lights for maybe 9 years now, but isn’t his cat.  The girls played with the cat for probably 15 minutes.

We all got in the Christmas spirit this weekend. It started with the Richmond Christmas parade. Here are Daphne and I bundled up and enjoying each other.  She kept standing up and turning around to give me super hugs.

Her favorite part was the University of Richmond float.  She turned to me, all smiley, pointed and said “Pider!” (Spider!- their mascot).  She also loved a red-nosed clown who pointed back and forth from his nose to hers.  And we had a great spot to watch each group try to not step into a steamy pile of horse poo.  One majorette didn’t even see it coming. A military academy commander stood in front of it to protect his corps’ shoes.  A little later, the crowd jokingly boo-ed when some parade staff shoveled it up.

The parade and the cold weather were pretty tiring.  Amelia sat up on Ethan’s shoulders for most of the parade so I am not sure why she is napping here!

After the parade, we moved on to decorating our house.  An impulse purchase that will be entirely worth the money: one purple tree for the girls’ bedroom.

Amelia even said “thank you mama!” when I showed it to her.  She and Daphne decorated it with a handful of ornaments.  Yes, Amelia took a bite out of the spice ornament she made last year, that is even painted with Amelia 2007.  She didn’t like it, just like we warned.

In that shot, Amelia is wearing her pink blanket cape, a sun dress and ballet shoes to dance around the tree.

Here is a bonus picture of another great look: Eyemask head band.  We were playing candy dominoes and she wrote (copied) the words of all the types of candies on the pieces.

I now realize now how difficult it is to keep B, b, D, d straight.  I think it would help if D and d had the curved part on the left side of the line.

After all the excitement, Amelia asked “Is today Christmas?”

Amelia and Daphne like to turn the jump-o-lene upside down and call it their “mouse house”:

One mouse is peeking out, and the other is climbing over the arm of the couch, into the top floor.  No one can tell them they aren’t clever!  Mouse house is being deflated as we reclaim our playroom to get ready for the holidays.

We wore some paint off the bottom of this very old top last night.

Amelia really enjoyed spinning it.  She pumped the handle as high as 30 or more times (thinking it would make it spin faster or longer) and then we would time how long it could spin.  Sometimes more than a minute!  It sounds like she plans to take the top for Show-and-Tell tomorrow too.