Hey Santa

Tuesday, I worked at Lillie's school and they had a Jack and Jill family tell the class about Hanukah. We also learned how to play dreidel. That evening we finished our Christmas shopping and visited Santa at the mall. When we told Lillie that we were going to see Santa, she asked "Is Rudolph going to be there?" I told her that the reindeer were at the north pole. Sophie did not cry or smile when she sat on Santa's lap.
One of my favorite memories of this Christmas season will be: When we got to the mall, Lillie stopped as she was getting out of the car, because she heard the Salvation Army bell ringers and thought that it was Santa's sleigh.



Sophie is starting to make new noises and she is starting to squeal really loud. She loves to dance while standing at her activity table or even when she is sitting down. This past week, she developed another ear infection. (Edited 12/10: I forgot to add Sophie's new accomplishment yesterday. While I was writing this blog entry yesterday morning I heard music. We don't have a church nearby and Lillie was in the bathroom. I then realized that it was the musical toy on the side of Sophie's crib. Sophie had learned how to maneuver herself over to the toy and kick her leg to hit the button with her foot. At 6:30 this morning she was fussing a little bit and I was hoping that she would put herself back to sleep and not need me to feed her. But she had maneuvered herself over to the side of the crib with the toy and began playing the music. Brian called it "the mommy call button.")

Lillie is starting to recognize words. The other day she saw the word "money" on a store wall. Lillie asked if it said "monkey." I told her that is said "money" and she will remember the next time we shop at that store. This week, we were doing workbook pages and she recognized the words "Yellow, Orange, and Green." Her Preschool teacher does a "word of the day" exercise everyday that she is in class. Another Christmas Memory: On Monday, we started putting ornaments on the tree. I unwrapped an ornament with different colored mirrors on it and handed to Lillie to put on the tree. When she saw the ornament she said, "Whoa, that is a pretty ornament."

We are getting use to the Michigan snow. It has snowed or flurried almost everyday since we have been back from Nebraska. If it snows an inch or two, they do not plow or put down sand/salt. In Nebraska or Pennsylvania they would have put down lots of gravel and salt. There was a lake effect snow storm that hit Michigan this past week. We are an hour from the lake shore. We got 1" of snow, but the lake shore area got 11-18".