Merry Christmas

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve this year was cold and rainy...a great day to stay inside with family. We only left the house for a Christmas Eve service and to sprinkle reindeer food on the front lawn.
Grace rearranged the nativity scene for the hundredth time.
We ate steamed mussels in white wine and scallops saltimbucca for dinner, along with Gigi's pecan pie. Charlotte and Madeline had macaroni and cheese.

The girls got a Fishing game and Cootie for their Christmas Eve gift. Grace drew pictures of what she wanted on her Christmas wish-list and left it for Santa to take. Madeline was so exhausted from the day she actually asked to be put to bed.

Tis the Season

BFF

I know first-hand what a gift it is to have a sister close in age. For me, there's nothing better than seeing my girlies play or talk sweetly to each other, but there is more fighting between them than I thought there would be at this age. Because Charlotte doesn't talk yet, she doesn't participate in the level of play that Grace and Madeline do, but she definitely has her own way of playing with each of them, and it's very interesting to watch. Though Grace gets frustrated when Charlotte knocks over her tea party set-up or spills her crayons, they never fight...Grace will usually pick Charlotte up and move her to the other side of the room. Poor Madeline has to deal with a lot from Charlotte though. She is CONSTANTLY getting toys taken away from her, and I'm having a hard time teaching Charlotte to share. This morning I heard a lot of screaming coming from Grace's room and I went in to find Charlotte throwing a fit because she wanted the baby stroller that Madeline had and was protecting. When I offered one of the THREE other strollers in the room to her, she began batting at them then picking up random toys and throwing them! And for what appears to be no other reason than to make Madeline mad, Charlotte refuses to hold hands with Madeline whenever the three of them play ring-around-the-rosey. But on the other side, Charlotte always chooses Madeline to lay and cuddle with.
Grace and Madeline are great friends and spend a lot of their days dressing-up and playing imaginatively together. I'm not sure if it's the age or if it's just girls, but they go from playing to fighting and back again so quickly that I completely stay out of it unless we're in the car and it gets loud or the fighting turns physical, which is very rare. While I was making breakfast this morning they were coloring at their table and Madeline yells, "MOM! Sissy took my crayon away while I was drawing a nice spider!" "Is this true, Grace?" I asked. "Yes, because she kept drawing on my flower!" Two seconds later Madeline was laughing and called Grace a silly goose and Grace said, "You know what Madeline?...I love you."

Madeline's art

Madeline recently decorated a birthday hat for Jesus. First, she drew baby Jesus wearing a birthday hat, then she drew Mary, so that Jesus was inside her. Just as I was thinking how smart she is, she drew everyone inside a donkey. I still think she's smarter than me.

This week Madeline decided to switch from her little line eyes to circle eyes, as you can see in this family portrait. Madeline (blue), Daddy (black), and Mommy (red)

Tomato harvest

Our tomato plants doubled in size and began to flower about the time we were pulling up our summer garden failures, so we left them to see what they would do. The week after our first cold snap, the girlies gathered over 3 dozen small green tomatoes that had dropped from the frost-damaged plants. I really don't think they would have been any happier if they had gotten giant ripe tomatoes. I fried the largest of the harvest for dinner.

Playmates

As Charlotte gets older, I see her using more imaginative play, especially with Madeline. I caught them here as they were slithering down the hall and hissing like snakes.