Christmas is coming soon!

Happy December!

Wow! The weather has changed a lot in the past couple of weeks. We have been trying to get our decorations out for Christmas and I have been trying to get some of the remaining outdoor stuff up since last weekend, but that has not been going very smoothly. First of all, we bought some new outdoor lighted displays for the front yard and we were happy to have purchased a couple of the items at a discount because the store was out of stock and we took the display items. The day we put them up in the yard, it was very cold and windy and within 20-30 minutes, one of the displays was knocked over and ruined. Days later, the other discounted display also gave in to the winds, broke and fell over. I have spent a lot of my time trying to repair these things and get them back out. I finally got one of them going today, but I am still brainstorming about the other one. My first repair attempt on that one failed miserably, so I need to be a little more creative.

Abby and David have been really sweet together lately. Abby has been teaching David lots of new words and a few silly (and noisy) games. It is nice to see them bonding like this and we hope they will always enjoy having fun together. David is learning handfuls of new words every day. Some of those words end up becoming points of obsession, though. For instance, he loves to say the word "vacuum", which comes out of his mouth as "a- bak'-koom." He says it even when there is no vacuum around, but he gets very animated about it when he sees one or goes near where one is stored. If you answer his comment about the vacuum and use that word, he will respond by buzzing his lips -- his way of imitating a motor sound. So, some things just defy explanation.

David is counting to 10 or 11 now and he very sweetly says "Thank you" when he hands something off to you or you give him something. He loves stringed instruments and he is constantly asking to see one of my banjos. The other day, I let David into my music room and showed him the wall where I have my guitar, banjo and bass hanging for easy access (you never know when you just need to pick for a while!) and David pointed to my guitar and said "a-tar" then turned to my banjo and said "a-ban'-jo." (David precedes many nouns with "a-". He figured this out on his own.) David turned to my bass and tried to call it another banjo, so I corrected him and said, "No, this is a bass. Can you say bass?" David responded with "a-boice!" So, we went down the line again and David called off the instruments as I pointed to them: "a-tar...banjo...boice!" Sweet.

We're going to spend the rest of the weekend doing things to continue to get into the full Christmas spirit. I'm looking forward to it.