Holidays

It is hard to believe that it has been almost a month since Christmas. The time seems to be flying by. Just to give you the official holiday update, Emily had a great time (for the most part). She asked Santa for very little (some dresses and some goggles) and she got everything that she asked for. Well, almost everything. At sort of the last minute she decided that she wanted a singing Elsa doll. When she saw that Santa didn't bring her one, she just calmly said, "Oh well, maybe next year." Poor little thing. Imagine being 4 and planning to wait a whole additional year for your singing Elsa doll. :(

Anyway, below are her fancy dresses that she got. In the first picture she is standing in front of her "castle" that we built and then she decorated.

Every now and then we get glimpses into how interesting her brain is. She thinks about lots of stuff and we never know what she is going to say next. One night, a couple of weeks ago, as we were talking to Abbie at dinner about friend-related issues at school, Emily (who often pipes up with helpful advice) pointed out that all the kids should just try to be nice. We thought that was a very good point and we told her so. Then she said, "If they aren't nice then Santa won't bring them very many presents. Like me, he didn't bring me very many presents." I'm sure that the sound of my heart breaking was so loud at this point that it was actually noticeable to those around me. I asked her if she thought that Santa was trying to tell her that she wasn't very nice, and she thought he probably was, so we talked about how its not about the number of presents. Rather its about getting presents instead of coal. She seemed to think that this was reasonable, so I tried to conclude with, "We just wouldn't want you to think that the number of presents says something about how nice you are. We wouldn't want you to make that mistake." She looked at me and said, "But mistakes are how we learn." Of course this is something that we have tried to impress upon Abbie - this idea that it is important to try and to make mistakes and to fail sometimes as a way to learn and grow in life. Apparently, Abbie isn't the only one who has been picking up on that message over the past few years. We had no idea that Emily had been paying attention all this time, so her comment stopped both of us dead in our tracks.

Anyway, between the Elsa doll disappointment, and the stuff about Santa thinking that she isn't nice, we decided to get her a singing Elsa doll, which oddly enough had fallen in price from $100 pre-Christmas to $28 post-Christmas. Imagine that! She was pretty happy about it and did a little happy dance that I wish I had been able to capture on video. So cute!