A Few Things Lately

Summer learned about fire safety at school, and now every time our fireplace puffs out a little smoke into the room, she does her emergency "Stop . . . Drop . . . and Roll," where she voices each step, and pauses in between each one to think about what to do next. Sometimes I'll see her randomly rolling on the floor, covering her eyes. She even gets Claire to do it with her occasionally.

Claire is currently very concerned about not being able to give Santa a hug and a kiss when he comes. She is very worried about this, so Summer is scheming up a plan to "stay up late and listen for the bells."

Pyper notices every time Rhett or I start to build a fire, and she'll march over to us, picking any tiny piece of paper off the floor for us to throw into the fire. She'll also take some of the newspaper and try to crumple it, then hand it to us. She feels very proud afterward. She is a great helper.

Rhett checked out the first book in "The Great Brain" series and started reading it to me a couple Saturdays ago in the car as we drove to the store. The girls actually listened quite intently, and now when we ride in the car together, and sometimes at bedtime, they ask for dad to read some more to them. So far, we have finished the first three chapters. We get interrupted often with things like, "What does bank mean? I don't know that word," (Claire, after Rhett read about the river bank) or "I think there are skeletons in 'Skeleton Cave,'" (Summer, predicting why the kids don't go to the cave.) It's been fun watching them enjoy a story with only one black and white picture a chapter--and that requires them to listen intently and sit still for extended time.

Me--well, I'm working on this year's Barney Christmas production. We've had a few glitches--like a broken camera, and then a new one that records in AVG which Windows Movie Maker isn't too friendly with, so I'm working on patience and will hopefully have our video out tomorrow night.

Bet you can't wait!