Thursday Family Blogging 121511

We got a good group photo this week, showing everybody, with Appa for scale, even:

Here, SteelyKid is opening a bag of small presents that Aunt Norma and Uncle Dan sent, while the Pip engages in the traditional five-week-old-infant pursuit of sleeping a whole lot.

When she's not opening early Christmas gifts, SteelyKid too engages in traditional three-and-a-third-year-old pursuits, such as bouncing balls:

And playing with great big cardboard boxes:

The photo quality of that last one isn't great, because I was sternly ordered to put down the camera and help her by closing the box. We then played an elaborate game involving her hiding inside with an ever-increasing number of toys, while I spun the box around, flipped it on end, and so on.

I doubt it tired her out any, but I'm freakin' exhausted....

Bonus cute pre-schooler anecdote 1: As I think I've mentioned before, I spend a good deal of time trying to convince her that I'm a blithering idiot. One of the oldest parts of this game involves changing the words of Goodnight Moon-- I'll open it to the first page, then start reciting the opening of Horton Hatches the Egg, or The Princesses Have a Ball, or the Gettysburg Address, or whatever other book I can think of, and wait for her to correct me.

The other night, we read Goodnight Moon for the first time in a while, and I did that as usual. She said, "Daddy, that's not right!"

"It's not?" I said, playing dumb. "What is this book, then?"

She gave an exasperated sigh, rolled her eyes, and flipped the book back to the cover. "Look, it says Goodnight Moon," pointing to the words. Then she opened to the first page, pointed to a word, and said "What's this word?"

"Room."

"And this one?"

"Green."

"And this one?"

"Great."

"See, Daddy? You just look at the words, and you read all of them!" Another eye-roll and exasperated sigh.

She's ready to be a teenager already...

Bonus cute pre-schooler anecdote 2: another part of our bedtime routine is that I set a timer on my phone, leave it on the nightstand, and promise to come back when it beeps. This is a hold-over from when she wouldn't go to sleep without one of us lying in bed with her.

Lately, she's been getting out of bed, getting my phone, and bringing it back into bed with her. She's also started re-setting the timer to odd times, and fun stuff like that.

Last night, though, I went in after the third round of timer-setting, and she was sitting up with my phone. Seeing me, she said "I'm just playing a card game!" And held up the phone with a Free Cell game in progress, where she had not only gotten two aces plus a couple of low cards up, but had made other legal moves.

I couldn't think of anything to say to that, so I just went back out, and left her playing Free Cell.