'Twas the night before Christmas . . .

And all through the house,
Not a creature was stirring,
Except for my daughter.

About 3:30 in the morning - Christmas morning! - I awoke to the sound of Ellie screaming in her bed. I lay quietly for a while, listening to see if she would sort herself out or if she sounded like she was genuinely hurt or scared. After about fifteen minutes, she escalated from screaming to high-pitched shrieking, so I decided that the time had come for me to investigate. After all, what could she be shrieking about on the night before Christmas?

The moment I opened the door to her room, the screaming stopped. Wearily, I asked her, "Whatcha screaming about, kiddo?"

"Nothin'."

That was her story, and she stuck to it. Nothin'. She wasn't scared or hurt or cold or thirsty or having a nightmare. Nothin'.

Luckily for me, it was the one night of the year that I had the perfect answer to this: "If you keep screaming, you're going to scare away Santa and his eight tiny reindeer. Better lie down and get to sleep!"

Worked like a charm.

"Missing my daddy"

Ellie is just about ready to give up her afternoon nap (much to our chagrin). We still enforce "quiet time" in her room every day, but she usually spends the afternoon jumping around and singing. She's also trying out various strategies for getting us to come in and keep her company.

There's been the classic: "I'm thirsty. Can I have some water, please?"
And there's been the direct approach: "I'm not tired. I'm all done sleeping."
Then, the ever-sneaky: "I have to poop!" which doesn't work when we know she's just gone right before her "nap."

Her most recent try was "I hit my head! My head hurts!" However, when offered medicine for the aforementioned pain, she'll decline it. "No, it doesn't hurt now." She hasn't quite figured out how to stay consistent with her story, because we can still catch her out. I can ask, "Was your head hurting when you were crying in your bed?" and she'll forget, and say, "No."

She tried out "My head hurts!" with her father yesterday. Later that night, I was getting her ready for bed, when she volunteered the statement, "At my naptime today, I cried a lot." We went on to have the following conversation:

"Why did you cry so much, Ellie?"
"Because I was missing my daddy."
"Did you tell him that when he came in?"
"No, I told him my head hurts."
"Why did you say that, Ellie?"
"Because."
"Were you crying because your head hurt?"
"No, I was crying because I was missing my daddy."
I decided to go for the $64,000 question: "So your head didn't hurt?"
She answered, "It hurt a little, but that's not why I cried."

Meeting Santa

This is the first year that Ellie has really understood the concept of Christmas and Santa Claus. We took her to the mall to meet Santa on Saturday, and for the first time ever, she actually spoke to him. He asked what she wanted, and she said, "A Dora book and a Froggy book." Santa said that books were always a good choice, then asked, "Anything else?" and she answered, "No." Since this might have been the shortest Christmas list he'd heard all day, Santa went on to ask her if she would leave out some cookies for him on Christmas Eve. Ellie replied, "Yes," so he asked what kind of cookies they'd be. Without missing a beat, she said, "Chocolate!" He told her that that was a good choice, too.

A few days later, Ellie's preschool held its Christmas party, and Santa paid a visit. Her teachers told us they were surprised that the slow-to-warm-up Ellie walked right up to Santa and told him what she wanted, then wished him a Merry Christmas. I later inquired what she asked Santa for this time, and she told me, "Cookies!" Sharp kid - asking one Santa for the cookies that the first Santa wanted!

Her sharp eyes have made Christmas preparations more complex, however. By total coincidence, I wrapped a bunch of her "Santa" gifts in one type of paper, and gifts for other in a different paper. When she arrived home from preschool, Ellie examined all the presents under the tree very carefully, and then announced "Santa has snowman paper! Mommy has gold paper with berries on it. But Mommy and Santa have the same bows. Some are red and some are green." I had never considered the notion that I'd have to use a different set of giftwrap, bows, and gift tags for the gifts from Santa. I promptly moved to hide the "Santa" wrapping paper and gift tags, and warned my husband and in-laws. And we're going with the story that Santa makes the gift bows for Target, where Mommy shops, so that he can get some reindeer food in exchange.

Pesky pea

Earlier this week, Jason was busy in the kitchen while Ellie was having her lunch. Soon, however, he was summoned with the following call: "Daddy, can you get the pea out of my nose?"

Jason went into the dining room, thinking that Ellie was just snotty and needed to blow her nose. He got a tissue and offered it to her, but she gave him a look as if he was crazy. So he held the tissue up to her nose and said, "Blow!"

Ellie blew, and out popped a pea!

I'm happy to report that there was only one pea, and it probably hadn't been there for long, since she was having peas with her lunch. When I got home that evening, I asked Ellie, "What's this I hear about a pea in your nose?" She told me very cheerfully that she'd put it there. I decided to ask her "why," not because three-year-olds have logical reasons for things, but because I was curious to hear what she'd say. Ellie answered promptly, "Because I liked it!" I inquired if she still liked it after it was in her nose, and she said, "Oh, no!"

So we had two lessons learned on this day. Ellie learned that it's not good to put things in your nose. And Daddy learned that if your three-year-old has a bowl of peas in front of her and says she has a pea in her nose, she really means it!