More Christmas shopping today; Leah is now just about done, right down to the silver Hello Kitty bag she begged for yesterday, and the pink glitter wedges that I am coveting myself, except for how they would totally give me clown feet. I picked up a book for Dad, a couple of movies for KC, a couple of things for my mom, and got some ideas for everyone else as I wandered. One of my girlfriends works at Sears and put the HK bag and a jumprope aside for me, and we're heading down to the base to do some more shopping tomorrow (mostly of the grocery variety).

The most frequently repeated lecture at our house in December is "put it on your Santa list; we don't buy for ourselves before Christmas." I broke that today by picking up The Red Trailer Mystery for Leah, who has been agitating for it for a couple of months now. It's so much fun to watch her go nuts over books that I loved when I was that age. Trixie now has pride of place next to Harry Potter and Narnia on her special bookshelf, while she's read her copy of Charlotte's Web to pieces and refuses to get a new one, because her copy is special to her as the one her Nonnie read out loud. And while she's never said as much, I think she's waiting for Adam to get old enough to run away to Manhattan with her, so they can bathe in fountains and sleep in a museum.

After a phone call from her teacher this week, where I learned that Leah will take out her notebook and scribble away when she gets bored with the lesson, it seems the time is ripe for Harriet the Spy, who is now biding her time in the hall closet till Christmas Day. (It took some doing not to read that one first myself, which means my number one errand tomorrow is to pay my library fines so I can raid the kid section.) Giving her ammunition like this may not be the best idea, but on the other hand, maybe she'll learn something from it. But in either case, she should be mightily entertained.

Next up: indoctrinating her into Tolkien. Heh heh heh.