Santa Claus Came to Town

Christmas was a lot of fun this year. This was the first year that I'd say that Sophia was really into Santa, so we enjoyed putting out cookies, milk and reindeer snacks. She was excited to get goodies in her stocking (it's amazing that she isn't hounding us to eat the chocolate) and get that "blue camera" that she requested. Our family and friends were SO generous and gave her so many wonderful gifts. Sophia is seriously spoiled, and there is no doubt about it. Luckily she still doesn't expect it and is a gracious gift receiver. She loves all of her toys and clothes and asks me to remind her all the time of who gave her a particular toy and tells me that we need to send a thank you because it is so nice. (We are still working on those.)

There are just too many pictures from the holiday to post here, so they are in our online photo album (just click on the flashing photos up in the corner of the page to go there). Franco was home and we visited with lots of family in a just a few days. Sophia came down with a cold, so she was a little uncomfortable, but she recovered pretty quickly and (miraculously) I was spared of this one.

Sophia's First Haircut

OK, it is not her actual "first haircut" but it is the first time I took her to the salon. We went to a kiddie place and it wasn't too bad. Next time I'll just make her an appointment with the lady that I see, though, because it didn't cost any less.


I had her take it a little bit shorter so the weight would stop pulling on Sophia's beautiful curls.

They give you a bag full of hair, a certificate and do it up cute with product and a flower. However, I did not appreciate the glitter gel that the lady put in without even asking.

More Christmas Crafts

Our second Christmas craft was making candy canes from beads and pipe cleaners. One of my girlfriends gave me the idea on her blog. Sophia did a really good job remembering the pattern. She made about six in all. Here is the one she gave to daddy:


And, of course, she hung it on the tree:

Fun stuff.

Surprise Lunch With Santa

We went to lunch to celebrate my father-in-law's birthday at a place called Shirasoni's Japanese Steakhouse. Don't ask me the exact name of the kind of Japanese cuisine it was, but it was the one where they put on a show on a big skillet in front of you. I liked it... it was interesting and the food wasn't bad. Sophia and Nadia ended up loving it because Santa showed up.

Who knew Santa had time to stop for lunch in Brentwood? We were planning to see Santa the following day at the mall for a nice picture for our Christmas card. However, since the big man came to us, we ended up getting a decent enough picture without going to the mall. Thank you Shirasoni Santa.

MyGym

Sophia goes to a parent participation class at MyGym once a week. She started just before Halloween. Sometimes we have a hard time getting out the door, but once she is there she has a great time.

She loves the ball pit. "Mama, bury me!"

Here she is at the end of circle time, right before they break for playtime:



Here she is at gymnastics time, swinging from one "island" to another on a rope:





Here she is at playtime again, swinging on an awesome swing:


I enjoy watching her so much and am so proud of how well behaved she is during class. She spends much of the afternoon after class asking me about the children in class who were not behaving. It is a mystery to her why they don't listen to their mommies.

Pardon the blurry pictures. I was using my phone to take pictures rather than disturb the class with flashes going off.

Santa Visit - Take One

Last year we could not find Santa when he visited our town and was forced to find him at the mall in Sacramento. This year I found a flyer saying that he would be visiting Toys R Us over the weekend, so we thought we'd drop by to say hi. Unfortunately, Santa was just making a quick visit so he did not bring the elves that set up a nice backdrop for pictures. All dressed up and standing in the middle of a store...

In order to brave standing next to a man that she hardly knows, Sophia brought along her friend Dumbo. Thank you to Dumbo for the moral support.

UCD Think Lab

Back before Sophia's birthday I got an email asking if she would participate in a study at UC Davis. In late-November when I finally responded to the email. Since they need to test 300 kids, they still could use her. We made an appointment to go on Friday in the AM.

The study is titled: Eye Movements in Children's Problem Solving and Reasoning. The investigator is named Zhe Chen. Eventually I hope that it will be published so I can see what they find out. I thought it was interesting, but failed to see a practical application. Maybe the information they find will be used by someone else doing a practical study... ?

Anyways, a couple students (I'm guessing undergrads by the look of them) met with us. Sherry sat Sophia in a chair with a booster and put her in front of a fancy computer screen that tracked her eye movements as she looked at pictures. While looking at the pictures Sophia was asked analogy questions. For example, "Here is a picture of a dog and a bone. They go together. What picture goes with the horse the same way that the dog and the bone go together?" In my opinion, Sherry spoke too quickly to be talking to a three-year-old, but she was probably nervous. Sophia got less than half of them right, but they were interested in where her eyes were going. My guess is that she wasn't thinking really hard about it because she liked to pick pictures that matched (a bird with another bird, instead a nest or worm).

Then Sophia went over and played a couple card games with a guy named Dominic. He asked her to say "happy" when she saw a sad face card and "sad" when she saw a happy face card. After hearing the directions a few times, I could tell she was thinking about it because she would pause and look thoughtful every time he put a card in front of her. Not sure the point of this one.

Dominic had another card game and then a puppet game. The puppet game was my greatest source of amusement and made the entire trip worth it for me. He had two puppets: the nice dragon and the mean bear. She was supposed to follow the directions of the dragon and not follow the directions of the bear. Telling her it was a mean bear almost set her into tears and sent her running for me, because bears freak her out a bit. Anyways, once they started playing she was fine. She happily did what the dragon said (touch your nose, pat your tummy, etc.) and then when the bear talked she would tuck her chin to her chest, look really serious and say "no" in a deep voice (kind of imitating the bear). It was pretty funny.

Anyways, it was an interesting way to spend our morning and Sophia scored some bubbles for all her trouble.

Christmas Crafts

Cut some shapes out of felt, using cookie cutters as my guide. Fabric glue, sequins and a three-year-old yields this:

Not sure what to do with them. They might go on gifts as decoration or I might string them together on a cord to hang like garland.

You can probably tell that I did not let Sophia squeeze the glue... she was plenty sticky putting sequins on my dots.