Audrey's and Grace's cousin Trever has re-named Santa, courtesy of the song "Santa Claus is coming to town." When you're 2, like Trever, I'd imagine that listening to adults speak or sing in English is kind of like an adult who knows just a bit of French listening to a fluent French-person speaking. Some words make sense and others don't and some just seem to blend together. Hence, Trever's "Santa Closet," as in "Santa Closet coming to town."
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We have these window decorations that are sticky on both sides that Grace loves to play with. Imagine really pliable and somewhat gooey stained glass that, when arranged the right way on a window, are semi-transparent in the light and form a picture. But instead of sticking them on windows Grace crumples them up and tears them into pieces and creates a trail of them around the house.
Occasionally if you're walking in bare feet or socks you'll step on a piece - the sensation is that you've just stepped on a slimy piece of banana or avocado but then you're relieved that it's something that can't make that sort of mess.
She'll taunt us, too, by showing us that she's going to put a piece in her mouth and, when one of us gets up to take it from her, she'll sprint the other way as fast as her little legs can take her. And sometimes she's really sweet about it and will walk up and hand us a piece and say "dank-oo" which is her latest version of "thank you."
Yesterday she was reaching for a large yellow circle on the window through an opening in the wooden window shutter. But when she reached through the shutter closed a bit and her hand got stuck. She was surprisingly content about it - when I walked down the stairs and saw her stuck there she looked back at me and just waited. So I went over and saw that her hand was stuck and moved the shutter so she could extricate herself. She looked up at me with her big blue eyes and reached out to show me her prize and said, "dank-oo." She's such a sweetheart.
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Audrey's school does a Christmas pageant each year and this year's took place last Tuesday. As I drove her to school that day I asked her what her role would be and she didn't know so I guess it just kind of comes together somehow. When I dropped her off I found out from her teacher that she could either be a shepherd or an angel. That was an easy one - angel of course.
After the pageant Suzanne called me at work to tell me I'd be cracking up when I watched the video that evening. Sure enough, when we put it on, Audrey was the stand-out. As all the other angels sat there patiently on stage, Audrey was on her feet blowing kisses to the audience. And she was waving too - like someone on a parade float waving to the crowd. THAT kind of waving. Now, baby Jesus was a real baby and did perfectly and I'm sure all eyes were on him for much of the time, but it was a close call between who the show-stealer was.
