Multiple Hats

Today is one of those days when I am wearing multiple hats. I usually use that term only figuratively as I actually do NOT like wearing hats of any type, but tonight I'll be wearing my doctoral tam (oh so much better than the mortarboard kind) as I'm hooding one of my graduate students at the commencement ceremony this evening. My morning was quite the contrast as I found myself covered in flour and such due to making Christmas sugar cookies with Nadia. I am actually not a fan of sugar cookies. I'd MUCH rather have chocolate chip or peanut butter, but these really were pretty good. She suggests putting some cream cheese frosting on top, and the next time I make these I'll have to give that a whirl as it would probably make them even tastier. Nadia had a blast decorating several dozen cookies. It was good exercise with her fine motor skills as it's tricky not to just dump a huge amount of sprinkles onto one cookie. Unfortunately at one point Ian got ahold of one jar of red and green nonpareils and spilled almost the entire bottle. They are really hard to get up off the floor as those little balls just keep rolling all over the place. What a mess!!! Although I'm not anxious for the kids to grow up too quickly, I do think making Christmas cookies will be a little less messy when they get a little older, or at least they'll be able to help clean up the mess! My kitchen looked like a total disaster by the end, but all is back to normal now.  Unfortunately in the middle of all that cookie making I forgot to call the Pediatrician between 12:00-12:30 to request a referral. I remembered at 11:00 and 1:30. Hopefully I'll remember at the correct time on Monday.

The holidays are fun, but they can be exhausting. On Wednesday I mailed all our Christmas cards. On Thursday I finished the shopping. There were 32 people on my list to buy Christmas gifts for, and many of those I was also buying birthday presents at the same time because we don't see them often so we give them their (wrapped) birthday presents at Christmas. They don't open them until their birthdays. It saves on shipping costs, but it means my shopping list is really long this time of year. I'm also happy to say that 90% of the presents are also wrapped. Whew.

One aspect of motherhood that I had greatly anticipated was reading to the kid, including chapter books. Last Saturday I got out Charlotte's Web and started reading it to Nadia. She sits and colors at the kitchen table while I read 1-3 chapters of the book at a time. Bliss. We are both enjoying it, and thankfully Ian usually plays by himself while she colors and I read the book out loud. I haven't decided which book to read next, but it's exciting to think of all the many books I can read to her in the years to come. I'm sure we'll read Charlotte's Web again in the future as some of it is going over her head at this point. I used to read to my middle schoolers so I'm planning on reading to them even when they are able to read chapter books themselves. For example, my sixth graders loved it when I read them The Hobbit.