Bubbles On My Toes

Thursday was Sarah's first bubble bath, and she LOVED it!  After several weeks of watching her try to play with the bubbles left in the tub after we washed her hair, I took pity on her and bought some watermelon-scented bubble bath.  I wish I had had my camera ready to capture the look of pure joy on her face when she ran into the bathroom and saw a big mound of fluffy white bubbles sitting on top of the bathwater!  I think I got a few good ones of her playing with them, though...

Argh!  Capt. Bubble Beard is the scariest of all pirates!

They don't taste as good as they smell, Sarah!

Look at this kid!  I just adore her...

Sarah's favorite part about bath time (aside from the bubbles, of course!) is playing with her ducks.  She talks to them and washes them with the washcloth so they're nice and clean.  She was a little perplexed by the bubbles that stuck to her squeaky-clean friends during the bubble bath, though.

Eventually, I taught her how to swish them back and forth in the water to rinse the bubbles off.  Now she does this every night (while saying, "Shake-a, shake-a") and then lines them up on the side of the tub in a perfect little row.  We count them 1-2-3-4 and then I give her a color and she points to the corresponding duck.  Of course, to her, they're all "pink"!

Cindy Lou Who

I have always loved Christmas specials, but the two I just can't have Christmas without watching are "A Charlie Brown Christmas" and "How the Grinch Stole Christmas."  I've seen them each at least 30 times (we'll account for a few years where I may have missed one and to downplay my age!), but I just never get tired of watching them.  Sarah doesn't have much interest in them yet.  We tried "Frosty the Snowman" thinking all the singing, the train, and the rabbit might have kept her attention, but she had other things to do!  She likes the episode of Dora the Explorer where Dora and Boots have to take a present to Santa at the North Pole, and she'll even request it from time to time ("Dora? Boots? Santa?").  I'm not giving up on sharing my love of the Grinch and Charlie Brown, though, and luckily, I have Nana Bev to help me!

Imagine my joy when I opened my mailbox and found a curious, squishy package addressed to Miss Sarah Jane...and it turned out to be THIS:

That's right - a hand-knitted Grinch hat!  Bev has talent (and time!) I can only dream of having...

Check out my little Cindy Lou Who (who was a TOTAL mess coming home from daycare that day for some reason!) deciding which ornament to Grinch from our tree.

Found it! 

    

I finally convinced her to return the ornaments to the tree and we settled down to read some books.  This has been my favorite part of Christmas so far this year.  Sarah will come up to me and say, "Mommy?  Come on, Mommy." Then she'll grab my hand and lead me into the living room where we sit on the floor in front of the tree and read Christmas books.  She calls stockings "socks" and says "ho, ho" when she sees a picture of Santa.  The other day I asked what book she wanted to read and she said, "Cheez Its."  I reminded her that she had just had a snack and she said, "No, Mommy.  Cheez Its."  Then she went and got this book for me to read to her:

 

OH.  Not Cheez Its but JESUS!  Silly Mommy!

So, welcome, Christmas, bring your cheer!
Christmas Day will always be just as long as we have we...

Yard Art

My parents have been friends with the Peterson family since I was in elementary school.  The Petersons do a lot of things well.  They are a family of extremes - they are extremely kind, they are extremely fun, and they do Christmas extremely well!  Grammie and Pa-Pa were over at the Peterson house helping the family decorate on Sunday night, and Sarah was lucky enough to get a sneak peek of the Christmas cheer that the Petersons bring to the neighborhood! 

We started with the front yard decorations.  The lights weren't on yet and the inflatable decorations were still flat in the yard, but Sarah had a blast!  She saw these guys and said, "Mommy!  Baby!  Ducks!  Puppy!  Car!"  It's a good thing she has words to explain the fun things she sees!

"Bus!"  (All large vehicles are buses right now...)

"Pooh!  Nose!"

"Waddle, waddle." (That's what a penguin says!)

We headed inside to check out this year's tree - can you see how extreme Christmas is at the Peterson house?!  It's amazing!!!

By the time we had said our hellos and admired the tree, the lights had come on outside and the inflatable decorations were up.  We headed back out to see the front yard at night!

"Puppy!  Sock!"

"Baa-baa!"

Checking out the rest of the yard

Taking it all in

Our yard is so boring!  Sorry, Sarah!  (Grammie - This does NOT mean that we need decorations and/or inflatables of any kind!!!)