Football analysis from a three-year-old

My husband Jason and I are big NFL fans. Needless to say, Sundays in our home are all about football. Our daughter Ellie is a good sport about it and she'll watch games with us for a few minutes at a time. But she prefers to watch a video on my laptop or play her own games, so I didn't think that much football knowledge was sinking in until tonight.

The Monday Night Football game featured Jason's beloved Pittsburgh Steelers against the hapless Miami Dolphins. The Dolphins entered the night winless at 0-10, and they might just possibly become the first team ever to go winless for an entire season. Ellie spent most of the evening playing board games in the other room, but she came in to watch the football game for a few moments. After watching the Dolphins run three plays, she declared, "That's not a very good team," and went back to her games.

Santa's house is very very far

We've begun the buildup to Christmas around our house. Sadly, this does not mean that we have our tree and decorations up. What it really means is that our three-year-old daughter has heard about Christmas, read books about Christmas, and sung songs about Christmas, so she's developing opinions on the subject.

Fortunately for us, she's a generally content and easygoing child, so she doesn't often "want" things or ask for things. So for her, the concept of "asking" Santa for presents seems strange. I'm sure she'll get the hang of it soon, but in the meantime, she's come up with other things she can talk about when she meets Santa. For example, I bought her a dress (a rare thing in her wardrobe) so she'd have a special outfit to wear for our big family holiday gathering, and it's red with off-white fuzzy trim. When she saw it, she said, "I can wear this dress to see Santa, and I can tell him that my dress matches his clothes!"

On another occasion, we were talking about where our family Christmas celebration would be held, and she explained, "We won't be going to Santa's house, because he lives at the Pole and it's very very far." I said, "Oh, really?" and she went on, "And besides, there are too many reindeer!" When asked how many reindeer there are, she replied, "Eight."

"Don't forget to go to sleep!"

Ellie is full of opinions and instructions these days. She loves to make comments like, "Daddy, why do you have hair in your nose?" and "Mommy, what do you smell like?" Tonight she was in rare form. We were playing with a ball painted to look like an eyeball, and she asked it, "Eyeball, where is the whole rest of your body?" Naturally, we had a big discussion of where its body was likely to be. In the end, Ellie decided it must be back at the eye doctor's office, since she was given the eyeball as part of a goody bag at the end of a trip to the ophthalmologist.

As we were getting her ready for bed, she had one last piece of instruction for her father. "Daddy, don't forget to go to sleep," she said. Stinker. She never reminds us about the important things, like "Don't forget to buckle my car seat straps" or "Don't forget your wallet and keys" but she's happy to remind us to go to sleep. Daddy said, "Oh, right. I was just going to lie in bed with my eyes wide open all night! I'm so glad you reminded me!"