Ball ball ball!

13 months 10 days

As it's the start of advent, (and also, I was given it last night and Katie discovered the bag of decorations), I decided that I would put our small tree up for Katie to wake up to this morning. We will have a larger tree in the lounge, but this is a small one in the kitchen. I think I may lose Katie to the kitchen until the large one is put up. She is delighted with it. And is wandering round clutching a tiny leftover bauble. We have had excited cries of 'ball, ball, ball', but after a few practises, we've now got 'bal-ble'.

I'm delighted at how excited Katie is about all the prettiness, colour, light- she was last year as well. She's an observant little lady. She always takes in everything about what is going on around her, so I can't wait to share this Christmas with her as I know she'll be delighted. I had been a little anxious about it, about how I'd feel, and I do have tinges of sadness, but now, I am overwhelmingly looking forward to making our own traditions together, building what I hope will become precious moments, and about raising her to know the true joy of the Christmas season.

I'm starting with our sock advent calendar, an adaptation of jumpingbean and the pinks sock advent calendars... we will have a voucher/chocolate/gift in the socks, and each day will add the Christmas advent stickers that I already bought to the labels with the socks. It's a work in progress - I have 14 new socks in the house, 8 bulldog clips, 1 peg, but a 24 flag long string of pretty bunting. And the full advent stickers! (and I wondered what on earth I'd do with a day that started at 5am!)

Today brought really bad snow again. It meant we couldnt go see Granny and Grandad. We did venture out to tea and toast, to find we were the only ones there (apart from the ladies who made the tea and toast, thankfully!). Friends did turn up though, so it wasn't a wasted excursion. We went home and the Cousins came to see us. Katie was really excited when they arrived and said 'ball ball ball' to big Cousin, and took her hand. Big Cousin looked confused and I told her just to follow Katie. Katie took her so proudly into the kitchen and pointed at the tree.

The tree has been a central feature of today. At bedtime, we had to say goodnight to it. She then stood at the top of the stairs pointing to go back down. So we did, as I thought she wanted other Monkey, but no, she wanted the tree. She then cried when I turned the lights off!