BAD DREAMS

Ellery came down in the middle of the night, crying.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"I had a bad dream," she whimpered.

"You can get into bed with me," I said.

"Okay. Wait..." she said with the air of someone about to make a serious mistake, "Mom, do you have sharp teeth?"

"No!"

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, I have the same teeth I always have."

"Okay," she conceded, "I hope Jack Frost doesn't chase me and eat me."

LITTLE PIXIE

I gave Ellery a job to organize all my thread spools by color into the new storage containers I bought. She enjoyed that so much that I suggested she organize all her hair ornaments into the leftover containers. She was happily sorting when she called out, "Mom, pretend you don't know who is organizing your stuff. I want it to be like The Elves and the Shoemaker."

THE THINGS WE HOLD DEAR

I was clipping Ellery's fingernails. "Be careful of the pinkie," she cautioned, "it's very special to me.

LOTS TO THINK ABOUT

Ellery was tossing and turning in bed while I was reading in her room. "You need to go to sleep," I told her.

"I just have a lot on my mind," she told me.

"Like what?"

"I was just thinking about if mermaids were real, and if they are, how we could send supplies down for them to build a playground."

CUE THE DRAMATIC MUSIC

Ellery and I were walking through a silent parking garage. "It's quiet," Ellery remarked, then added suspensefully, "...too quiet."

SIMILARITIES

Ellery was showing all the wallpapers she had saved on my Ipad. She has several categories she enjoys, including cute baby animals, Anime girls and pictures of food. She was showing a picture of coffee beans and she said, "I don't know why I saved this one."

Maybe because you thought it was chocolate," Emily suggested. Sometimes coffee beans look like chocolate."

"And so does goat poop. And M&Ms."

STILL LEARNING THE FINER POINTS OF THE GAME

Maggie called down the stairs to her Hide and Seek playmates, "I'm going to go hide upstairs, in my bed, under the covers."