Smarty Pants and Coffee Cozys

Audia's been talking up a storm these days. It truly amazes me how quickly she picks up on things. Last week in the bathroom she pointed at my curling iron (which she hasn't seen in months) and said "hot!" The only thing I can figure is that I must have, at some point, told her that my mom's curling iron (which she sees every night on the counter when she takes her bath) is hot. Hot has now become her word for everything that she's not supposed to touch. Just this past week she's started saying two syllable words and phrases. She says "Hot dog" and "Santa" (which comes out more like "Ahn-ta"), and a few times I've gotten her to repeat "I love you" ("I lom ooh"). She says "Pehs" for "please", "Fake" for "flake" and "Hahs" for "house." It seems like every day she's picked up a new word and learned how to use it. It blows my mind! She is definitely a smarty pants!

She's been really great with the Christmas tree, which we put up last weekend. We have a gaggle of child-friendly ornaments from when I was a kid, which we've put around the bottom third of the tree. She walks up to it and points at each one, wanting us to tell her what they all are. She also regularly points at the lights on the tree and says "hot" :-)
She also loves Christmas music. Everytime I put in a CD, she runs over to me and says "up! up!" I pick her up, and she then starts bouncing and giggling in my arms; her way of enticing me to dance her around the room to the music. Whenever a song stops, she signs 'more'. She really is such a happy, joyous kid. And such a joy to be around!

We are really looking forward to Christmas this year, in spite of our financial limitations. This year will be Audia's first "real" Christmas in my opinion; She was only 3 months old last year, so she didn't really know what was going on. I can't wait to see her open all of her presents!

I've been continuing my knitting frenzy, and have had a lot of fun creating a pattern for coffee cozies the past couple of weeks. I've gotten pretty good at making them, and am considering opening a shop on Etsy to sell some of them. What do you think?