Merry Christmas!

We hope this rare update finds you all well and enjoying this holiday season. 
 

 my little cook

our masterpieces



Great Grandmother Fay and Allie

I have had several days off - okay... a WHOLE week(!!) in which I've enjoyed spending time with Allie.  I really miss getting to spend quality time with her during our rush days and weeks.  It is a constant circle as you all can relate to.. get up, get ready, rush to school (because we are always late) hurry to work, go back to school to pick her up, rush home in rush hour traffic, make and eat dinner, bathtime and then bedtime. We are lucky if we get 30 minutes of just funtime or learning time. Weekends give us a bit more free time, but I sure hate not getting in the Mommy&Allie time every day. So, when I have time off.. that is what we do.  We really didn't do a lot to "write home" about. But, we had fun. We did the whole Christmas thing - we baked cookies, cooked a Christmas meal and shared it with Allie's Great-Grandmother, Fay, at her house. We decorated the house and we played. We even shopped, but only once as most of the shopping was done so that trip was simply for fun and a few extra goodies. 

our kids... Allie... Santa... Nicky...
yep. I'm claiming the big guy

 
Allie is growing up as you can tell. She is talking up a storm and her words are more intelligable every day. She loves to sing and practice her words. She is a bit hooked on the media outlet we allow her to enjoy - movies are a daily request. Her favorites these days are Disney's Brave; Tangled and Lion King. Allie is very smart. I'll tell her No to these movies if she has watched them already recently and after a while she has it figured out that I really mean "No". Then, she will ask for what I would consider a more "educational" movie like Signing Time or LeapFrog DVDs.  She is a smart girl without a doubt!



Pretending at her friends kitchen

She has recently increased the pretend play and I find it adorable. Her dolls have to eat with us and have at least a plate and a drink. She will play with her pretend kitchen and do the dishes and talk on the phone. She walks around the house pretending to be on her "phone" talking to a number of people.  She acts out scenes from her favorite movies and it is a bit like a Charades game as we try to figure out which movie, which scene and which character she is portraying.  Sometimes she is playing multiple characters. I'm seeing Hollywood in her future.

For Christmas she recieved some wonderful items. She now has her own Art Easel to allow her to become a mini-Picasso if she desires. Special thanks to Granny and Paw Paw for this addition to our home. So far, the walls have not been repainted by Artist Allie, but the year isn't over yet and we will keep you posted.

She also recieved several pretend-play items for her kitchen set. Santa also did not disappoint with a gift of a doll (or three). She has a new Mirada doll from the movie Brave. A new baby doll and a Simba doll/toy to go with the Lion King.  I'm excited to report that she loves her Tag Reader. This is a Pen-Like tool that has memory in it and we can download the audio to special Tag Reader books. Then, when she puts her pen onto the pages it reads the words for her or spells them out if that is what she wants. It also gives sounds and dialogs to the pictures. So much fun for her!!  While we have a LeapPad for her that has the Tag reader books on it, it also has movies and games and she tends to go towards the movies (what a shocker) than the books. We also had the old style of Tag Readers that had a pen attached to a big device that you'd put a book into, but we found a lot of issues with those for her so we hoped this Tag Reader would be a good solution. We believe it will work good for her.

Reading "Brave" with her Tag Reader

Well, that was our Christmas in a nutshell. We hope yours was wonderful and we hope your New Year is spectacular. We also hope to see those of you we don't see regularly more often in 2013. 

Love from The Lovell Family