Merry Christmas

I didn't get around to sending out Christmas cards this year, so I hope these pictures will do. Thanks to all of you who sent cards to us-- they are greatly appreciated!

We had a great Christmas day with all our family-- albeit a hectic one! We woke up Christmas morning and found that Santa had brought a new doll crib and changing table for Sophie. She was so excited, and ran immediately upstairs to get her dolls. We opened our gifts to each other, and then it was off to our first stop-- Dan and Anna's house.

We met up with all the Reckards for brunch, including Jen who came up from Orlando. After we ate, we opened presents again. Sophie had lots of fun playing with Emma and Kylie!



Our next stop was my parents' house. Sophie always loves going to see Nana and Papa, especially because of their doggies Colby and Jasmine! All you have to do is say doggies and she's in the car. She played with Colby and Jasmine for a while, and then it was time to open some more presents.


Sophie with Nana and Colby


Sophie tries unsuccessfully to ride Jasmine.

After that, it was off to my Grandma's house for dinner. Grandma always cooks a huge Christmas dinner, and this year was no exception. She had turkey, dressing, sweet potato casserole, mashed potatoes, crowder peas, green rice, potato salad, green bean casserole, regular green beans, corn, deviled eggs, and rolls. No kidding! She really loves having the family over for Christmas and loves cooking.

After we opened presents at Grandma's, Grandma came out with two surprises: the first one, a refurbished bouncy horse that Paul used to play on when he was little. She even had a little cowboy hat that was perfect for Sophie to wear. Sophie got on the horse, held her hat in the air and yelled, "Yee haw!" (I have no idea where she got that from.)



The other surprise was a cake she had made just for Sophie. It was a frosted poundcake decorated with Christmas trees and a little train made out of candy. Here's the picture:


Sophie loves cake! (Well, technically, she loves the frosting.) She hovered over the cake for the rest of the night, sneaking little bits of frosting with her finger.

Finally it was time to go home. It was a long day, but I feel blessed that we were able to spend it with our families.

The Mind of Sophie

Since Sophie was old enough to pick things up and play with them, she's been lining them up. The first time I realized there was an order to it, she was about a year and a half old. She had connected a tower of large square Lego blocks in a color pattern-- red, red, blue, blue, yellow, yellow, green, green, black, red, blue, yellow, green, black. It freaked me out a little bit a first, but now we're all pretty used to it around here. Here are some examples of her organizational abilities:


Her dollhouse furniture in a row.


These are her play dishes all lined up. Notice how she has sorted them by color and size. Also, each pair of colored dishes has the same kind of plastic cookie or muffin on them. Also note the silverware at the end of the line, also arranged according to color.


This is her magnetic alphabet on the fridge. Originally I had it in alphabetical order going in horizontal rows, but she arranged them in color order in one long vertical row.
These are just a few examples. She lines up everything. I put the Nativity out on the coffee table where she could play with it (it's not breakable). The first thing she did was line up the animals according to size.

She is very much a creature of habit. Even when she was an infant, she craved a schedule. I think routines are comforting to her. We established a bedtime routine for her when she was a baby, and it hasn't really changed all that much over the years. The good thing about it is that (unless she's sick), bedtime is a peaceful process-- once the bedtime routine has started, she goes to bed without any struggle.

In other news, Sophie has discovered How the Grinch Stole Christmas (the cartoon one). I put it in on Sunday night while we were putting lights on the tree to occupy her, and we have watched it multiple times each day since. When the Grinch comes on she gasps and says, "Who's that? It's the GRINCH!"