Happy Holidays!

Every morning around Halloween Ellen and I passed big blow up decorations in 2 different yards on the way to daycare. There was a pumpkin with 2 ghosts sitting on top of it in one yard and at the other house there was a family of 4 pumpkins. Without fail, Ellen always asked to see the "pumpkin lights" as we were getting in the car. Now that Halloween is over, one of the houses replaced their blow up pumpkins with a fall-like scene: bales of hay, a scarecrow and some real pumpkins. So now we have to go see the scarecrow every day.

I just know she is going to love Christmas decorations and lights. I have a lot of wonderful Christmas memories from my childhood. Growing up there were a lot of Moravian stars glowing on people's front porches at the holidays. Andrea and I used to count them, and Christmas trees in windows, on the way to and from church. Just thinking about it makes me want to do something neat at our house this year. My mom used to go all out with the Christmas decorations and we always had the most beautiful tree. It was different every year. It reminds me of the year my parents got a fake tree for the first time and tried to hide it from me. They thought I would be upset. I have always loved picking out and decorating the tree (except the lights-my mom likes a BRIGHT tree) and as Andrea and I got older, we took charge of the tree. There were certain ornaments I liked to put on the tree every year. This particular Christmas I was in college and the tree was lit and decorated before I came home for break. I didn't even notice it was fake! In my defense, to keep the secret, my parents would make comments about how good the tree smelled. They even talked about needing to water the tree because it was getting dry. A few days after Christmas, Phillip and I came back to my house and as soon as we walked through the door we were told to go into the living room. This was very strange. Phillip, knowing about "the tree", caught on to what was happening and encouraged me to stay in the living room. After a few minutes (that is all I could take) we went into the den. My parents and sister were dismantling the tree and did not want me to see them. Maybe you had to be there or maybe you have to know my family, but I thought (and still think) this is so funny. I am not sure why they thought I would be upset that the tree was fake, I wasn't, but I love them for thinking they needed to spare my feelings and for trying so hard to do so. They almost pulled it off! They have used the fake tree ever since and it always looks great. I do prefer real trees but we have a little pre-lit one that we have used for the past 5 years and it has worked great for us. I think we will start getting real trees as Ellen gets older.

I am looking forward to getting out all of our Christmas decorations. Is it too soon to start?

Growing up right before our eyes

George, the best dog ever

Sorry Lucy - but you know it's true

In all my glory

Not so fast little girl

There will come a day when she doesn't want to dump out all of her toys and play on the floor. Or climb in and out of her toy basket over and over again. There will come a day when she no longer says "I want to hold you" and dozens of other phrases that I cherish. There will come a day when she realizes her name isn't spelled E-L and she will learn all of the letters. There will come a day when faithful friend Night Night isn't needed at bedtime. There will come a day when she won't want to sing 10 verses of Old MacDonald or read book after book after book. There will come a day when she doesn't ask me to draw her a kitty cat. That will be a sad day.

"Pacifier Broken"

We have made it through 6 nights with no pacifier - barely. Ellen has been sick with a cold for over a week so our timing wasn't the greatest. At one time we had 5 pacifiers (used the same ones for 1 1/2 years) and suddenly they all started cracking and had to be thrown away. I bought 2 more a month ago. We lost one and she bit the tip off of the other one. That left us with 2 options: buy more pacifiers or stop cold turkey. We decided it was time to say goodbye to her trusted companion. She hasn't used one at daycare in well over a year so it only impacts naps at home and night time. It is going ok. She still asks for it but falls asleep without it. The hard part is her waking up in the night and not having the pacifier there to help her go back to sleep. I think she said "Mommy" at least 250 times starting at 2:00 this morning. We finally got her settled. I wish this never ending cold and the demise of the final pacifier had not coincided. I wonder how this would have gone down if the circumstances had been different.

Side note: Phillip HATES when people say "paci" so it is "pacifier" all the way in our house

Ellen and Nana