The amazing way Hannah's mind works...

Hannah is a talker. Always has been, I'm sure always will be. She comes by it naturally from a long line of gabbers. What is so amazing to me though, is the way that she says things sometimes. A few examples from yesterday...

I had forgotten to give Hannah something to drink while we were eating lunch . Did she say, as many other almost 3 year olds would, "I need a drink" or "Could I have a drink?" or "I'm thirsty"? Oh, no. Not Hannah. She turned to me and said. "Mom, could I please have something to wash it down because I think I have some bread stuck in my teeth?"

Later, playing a game where we were looking for things with different shapes in the living room, Hannah decided to look for objects which are circles. She didn't go for the obvious round clock hanging on the wall, or the wreath, or the ball on the ground in front of her. Oh, no. Not Hannah. In this exact order, here were her list of circular observations: the bulb in the lamp is round (looking at its circumference...naturally), the knobs on the doors are round, the top of your coffee cup is round, and the base of the ceiling fan is round.

Her clever little mind is drawn to the complex over the simple every time. It's astounding some days.

Christmas Cookies

Hannah and I began the (hopefully) new tradition of decorating Christmas cookies together. I frosted each of the sugar cookies and she was in charge of the sprinkles. Then, we also made Chocolate Crinkles for daddy and she got to roll them in the powdered sugar. As you can see, she did a very good job. She was so precise about some of them...no surprise there. The hardest part was getting her to understand that she couldn't lick her fingers when she got a little frosting or a lot of powdered sugar on them and then touch the cookies that others might eat. Eventually, though, she got it and waited until we were all done to lick her fingers and enjoy a whole cookie of her own. I can't wait to do it again!

Christmas Photos

Here are some snapshots of our fun day. There aren't very many of the Peterson gathering, since I got my new camera about an hour before we headed to my folks. (Thanks, Andy and Hayes!) Then, of course, there are tons at my folks because I had a new camera to play around with.

Evolution of Noah's First Black Eye

Hannah's Nativity...dinosaurs and monkeys and ducklings, oh my!

What? You didn't know that Tigger and Goofy were there for the birth of Christ? I guess we have a different translation of the Bible at the Peterson house...

The runner-up Christmas card picture

Hayes and I almost went with this one for the Christmas card. We thought it was such a funny shot. Amazing how we can look so calm and happy sandwiched between dual freakouts. We decided against using this one, though, for fear that people who don't know our kids that well might think this is their natural state. It's not. This was about 10 seconds of fussing. They are really quite sweet and mellow most of the time. Really. I'm not just saying that because I'm their mom. Honest.

Here we are again

After a long hiatus, a new posting. Life is too busy when working full time educating other people's kids and trying wholeheartedly to care for your own, so clearly, blogging falls to the bottom of the priority list.

New for Hannah: She had fun decorating the Christmas tree. ("How do you think of that mom?" "That's beautiful, Hannah." "Thanks, I did it myself.") Also, she's obsessed with pretending to swim on our living room rug, but insists that you roll up her pants legs like shorts. Because, naturally, you swim when it's hot outside so you should be wearing shorts at all times. And finally, when I asked her a yes or no question the other day, her answer was "Indeed!"

New for Noah: In addition to the serious black eye-- (which looks soooo much better now), Noah is a talking machine. He repeats everything right now. New this week are "vacuum" and "broccoli" both of which he likes very much. He also loves names "Papa, papa, papa" and "Hannah, Hannah..." over and over. And finally, he's learning to count. The other day, looking over my shoulder out the living room window he suddenly starts repeating "five, six, seven..." Too cute!