Merry Christmas!

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Leif will be three and a half in a few days. His favorite thing right now is coloring. He colors for hours a day, and then gets on the computer and uses the paint program there for a while. We got him some watercolors for Christmas, so now he spends a while each day painting, too.

He's getting frighteningly good on the computer. About six months ago, we were at the library one day, and out of the blue he just started using one. He'd obviously seen us using them before, but hadn't shown any sign that he really knew how until that day, when he grabbed the mouse and started clicking around. Now he plays all sorts of games.

He adores his sister. So much, in fact, that he wants to be in her face or climbing all over her constantly. We're working on discouraging this.

He loves helping with cooking and baking and pretty much anything. Except cleaning up the bedroom. But even that isn't a hard and fast rule - the other day he said "I'm going to clean up the bedroom!" and then proceeded to do so. When we did the pre-Christmas toy cleanout, I told him to put toys he didn't want anymore in a box so we could give them to kids who needed them. He very happily did that, and would have given away even more if I'd let him.

This morning we were playing a game he got for Christmas, "Hi Ho Cherry-O". Each player has a tree with 10 little plastic cherries on it, and a little basket to put the cherries in. You spin a spinner, and it points to either 1, 2, 3 or 4 cherries, a dog, a bird, or a spilled basket. If you get the dog or bird, you have to put two cherries back on your tree. If you get the spilled basket, you have to put them all back.

When I got a bird, he scooted the spinner a bit further onto the next area to help me, so I wouldn't have to put any cherries back. I was going to discourage that, but then realized that I was discouraging cooperation in favor of competition, and decided we might as well just play it that way. He was having fun, anyways. After he won, he made me keep spinning until I'd filled my basket, too.

He's a hyper crazy pain in the neck at times (especially when he climbs on Astrid while she's sleeping), but I'm really impressed by how sweet and generous and just plain neat he is.