My three-year-old niece eats ony foods made with white flour and/or sugar, so she was very excited about getting a meal of decorated Christmas cookies. She has been talking about making cookies with her aunties for weeks.

She doesn't have good hand coordination yet so when she said, "Help me, Aunt Beff. This is hard," I wanted to squeeze her and give her chubby cheeks lots of kisses.

I have not spent significant amounts of time around little kids until my niece was born, and I find it highly entertaining and hilarious.

When my brother-in-law walked in the kitchen, he asked my niece if she needed to go poo-poo in the potty. She is not having an easy time of potty training because she wants her mother to treat her like a baby and change her diapers since her infant sister is getting a lot of attention. She responded to him, "NO, Dad! YOU go away and go poo-poo in the potty!!!"

The cookies that she decorated look like Jackson Pollack paid us a special visit from the grave. She covered one cookie completely with multi-colored sprinkles, rending it inedible to all but those with guts of steel.

She would draw from the icing bowl, but the little plastic kiddie spoon wouldn't make it to the cookie. Somehow it managed to work its way to her mouth instead.

After eating about a cup of icing, she started dancing crazily to the Christmas music playing on the stereo. She pulled her pants down just enough to reveal her bottom, and then shook her butt from side to side to the beat of the music. Four adults were in the kitchen laughing so hard that we couldn't breathe. The response from us was inappropriate since now she will try that again at school to see if she can evoke a similar response from her peers.

She has recently discovered the use of superlatives, so she declared the day to be the best day of her life. I suppose it isn't yet difficult to achieve that honor, since she has only been in this world around 1200 days.

Hope you have a Merry Christmas!