Ellie Blurt, Mall Cop.

Title courtesy of my mom, after hearing about the report I got at Ellie's parent teacher conference. Her teacher said that she's hitting all of her marks academically and socially, except that she tends to talk out of turn and blurt things out, and she sometimes has to be reminded that it's not time for stories. Ellie Blurt, Mall Cop. I asked her teacher if she ever bursts into tears over anything, and apparently not. Saves it all for home, for mommy. When we went over to Sara Jo's on Sunday night, we joked about the fact that it was a new record - Ellie was in the house for literally less than 60 seconds before she started sobbing about something (because Whitney said Lexi wasn't coming over, which was untrue. Never trust a three year old!)

So, overall a good report. Ellie is really flourishing in her new classroom and enjoying every minute of school. Her teacher and I nerded out about the fact that she's on the verge of reading, and how very exciting it is to be able to read - she and I both have very visceral memories of the first time the letters on the page made sense as words. Because reading is the best! (sorry, video games.)

It's now December, which means that the angel lady arrived. And by arrived, I mean that thank goodness Adam woke up first this morning so that the angel lady could bolt down the hallway and put out some candy before Ellie woke up. We also put up Christmas lights last night, after 5 years of being a Grinch house. I had to go to the hardware store, and the kids had been talking about it, and I figured, how hard can it be to put up a single strand of lights above our garage door? We have a single story house - it's only 8 feet up. So, we bought the lights, we already had an outdoor extension cord, and twenty minutes and a handful of nails later, we have some multicolored icicle lights up front! Because if I'm going to decorate, it's going to be gaudy. OBVIOUSLY. I didn't realize until I was an adult that people actually bother buying and using white lights - so boring! Or having a tree with ornaments that match. I mean, mine match! They're all ornaments!

Back to school this week has been tough on the little ones - yesterday and today Adam has napped more than three hours, and even Ellie's been sacking out pretty hard. The holidays, it takes it out of you!