Sophia says...

Ava was playing with a puzzle app on the iPad. I walked by as Sophia was saying to her, "When I was a baby we didn't have iPads to play with."

We drove around our neighborhood last night to look at Christmas light displays. I get car sick every year we do this. I announced that I was starting to feel car sick. Sophia says, after seeing another lit star on a house, "Well I'm starting to get star sick."

Rick told Sophia that she could have a candy cane if she shared half with daddy. Sophia broke the hook part off the candy cane and said, "Here, this is your share."

The other day at Sophia's school party, Santa came to visit. Sophia told us he looked like the other Santa at the Santa dinner. Rick and I told her it was the same Santa. She said, "No, they just dress up as Santa." I asked her why she thought that. She says, "The Santa dinner Santa had a black mustache showing under his white beard. This other Santa had dark hair on his arms. Santa doesn't have dark hair."

Christmas kick-off bonanza

It started the day after Thanksgiving. Sophia had been asking (relentlessly) when we could decorate for Christmas. At first I thought it was cute. Now, not so much. The elves, those little pesks, must have snuck into Sophia's room and sprinkled Christmas cheer all over her. I'm thinking maybe they accidentally dropped the whole damn bottle. It's become her obsession, this Christmas business. We cannot drive in the car with regular music anymore, it has to be holiday music. And she knows when we try to tell her the holiday music is over. She knows all about Sirius-XM radio. It's never over. Ever. Remember that felt advent calendar I made last year? 25 days is much too long for me at this rate; I should have made it 12 days. We've worked on 2 drafts to Santa. Final draft TBD. She's worried the ants will infiltrate our house again this year and eat Santa's cookies. I'm not sure where this stuff comes from. I am a lot more Bah Humbug than FaLaLa-lala. Rick is neither here nor there about it all until the day of Christmas.

On the first week before Christmas countdown we:

• Got the tree.
• Saw the Nutcracker ballet.
• Had dinner with Santa.
• Started the advent calendar. First activity included a scavenger hunt to find candy canes, hot cocoa, and The Nightmare Before Christmas.

20 more days to go...

I'm exhausted already.