Christmas Morning

Sadie woke up at 5, and we weren’t able to get her back to sleep.  We finally came downstairs at 6:30, and as you can see she was happy with what she found.  Despite the lack of sleep we all had a very nice day.

Tired Angel

Sadie was an angel in our church pageant.  She thought the pagent was too long.  Next year she wants to be something else.

The I Guy and the Y Guy

We’ve taken up calling Frederick the “I Guy” sometimes, because he says, “Aaiiiiieee,” (which usually means, “hey, I’m about to cry unless you do something about it – fast.”)  Sadie said, “Hey, Frederick is the ‘I Guy’ and I am the ‘Y Guy’?”  “What makes you the ‘Y Guy’?” I asked her, “because you always ask ‘Why’?”  “Yeah,” she confirmed.  “Who made that up?” I asked.  “Me, myself,” she said.  It is an apt description; Sadie has reached the stage-of-many-questions.  And so there you have a quick characterization of my two kids – “Aiiiieee Guy” and “Why Guy [Gal].”

Yesterday Sadie woke up saying, “There’s no water, so fish can’t swim here.  Is that right?”  We assured her that no fish could swim in the bed.  Our doctor warned us that nightmares (and related night-waking) often start around age 4.  Shall we take this as evidence?

Christmas is in our minds and hearts often these days.  The Christmas spirit inspires comments like this: (thoughtfully) “I think Jingle Bell Rock is a rock shaped like a jingle bell.”  We decorated our tree on 12/7.  Sadie hung all the candy canes on one branch because they matched and she “thought they would look good together.”  We have an outhouse ornament, which has been a very popular toy for the dollhouse people.  Sadie looks forward to opening a new window on her advent calendar each day.  She tells us that she hopes Santa brings her, “a carseat and a bassinet for her ‘tube kid,’ a carseat and a bassinet for her doll Annie, a carseat and a bassinet for the doll Frederick, AND a carseat and a bassinet for her doll Ian.”  (Her ‘tube kid’ is an old wrapping paper tube that has become part of her doll family.)

Sadie’s friend Esther recently sent her a farmer doll as a big sister gift.  Sadie and I spent a few minutes playing with it before dinner.  When I got up, I took the package and cardboard insert that came with the farmer and threw them in the recycling.  Sadie finished her meal quickly and returned to the dollhouse.  “Where are the instructions for the farmer?” she cried indignantly.  Ransom and I both chimed in with explanations that it was just a doll and didn’t come with instruction, but then, slowly, I realized …..  When I fished the cardboard insert from the packaging out of the recycling and handed it to Sadie, she smiled in pleased recognition.  That was what she wanted.  We had to keep it around for another two weeks, but now I finally snuck it back to the recycle bin.  (Hard to keep a clean house when you have to keep “tube kids” and “farmer instructions!”  That’s my excuse.)

They say regression is a normal part of becoming a big sister.  So we weren’t too surprised when the glimpse of a pull-up diaper in her pajama drawer made Sadie want to wear one.  Sadie was already dressed in her pajamas with underpants.  “You have two choices,” we told her, “you can stay as you are, or you can wear the diaper over your underpants,”  (The idea being that this way it would just be a prop and could be reused.)  “You have two choices,” she responded, “I wear the diaper with no underpants or I don’t go to sleep.”  Eventually I convinced her to wear the diaper with underpants by having her put on both at once.  In the morning, she peed in it.  So who won that battle?

Sadie has never been a kid to say “I love you” often.  I could count on 2 hands the number of times I’ve heard her say it.  So it has been a delight to have her signing “I love you” to us at bedtime and other special times throughout the day, after reading “The Kissing Hand.”  The other day she even signed it to Frederick.  Then she tried to make him sign it back.

Sadie and I have been baking together.  We’ve always done this, but it has taken on new meaning now that it is one of few things we do together without the baby.  She’s getting pretty good at it – fewer spills while stirring the dry ingredients, better identification of the measuring tools, better scooping and levelling off.  What I’m especially impressed with is her baking math.  With some help she can read the labels of the spoons/cups and identify the 1/2, 1/3, and 1/4th.  When our teaspoon didn’t fit into the jar of powdered ginger, she said, “that’s okay, we can just do two of these,” and she held up the 1/2 tsp.  I’ve shown her that trick before, but only once or twice and it was over a month and a half ago.

We all went to the Museum of Science on 12/3.  We saw about half the museum.  Sadie wants to go back so she can see the whole thing.  She’s very thorough, that girl.  Sadie’s great-grandmother Hazel, GG, visited December 5th to the 7th .  Sadie kept her busy with games like “hide the glasses” (not GG’s glasses, but some from the 3D show at the museum.)  On 12/10 we went to the Peabody Essex museum.  They had an origami exhibit.  I helped Sadie follow an instructional video to fold a jumping frog.  She watched the instructions intently and made the first few folds by herself (with me evening and flattening the crease).

Snowman