Christmas

Anna wasn't very impressed with the number of presents under the tree Christmas morning, but that was probably my fault - I had wrapped everything the week before and left them under there as I have in the past. I tried to make them look like more Christmas morning but she wasn't fooled. So instead of rushing to see what was inside of them, she went straight to her chair and asked for a banana!

After breakfast, we opened our presents. We asked Santa not to be too generous this year since it's still all a bit overwhelming and Anna's relatives would have a lot of gifts for her as well. Santa brought her some blocks and a magnetic wooden doll that she can dress. She seemed especially interested in her and wanted to open her right away. I was very happy about that since it was my favorite present as well!

Overall, Anna seemed pleased with her presents, but she still has difficulty actually opening the gifts so her enthusiasm of opening them definitely did not outweigh her interest in playing with whatever she opened.

So we took our time especially once we reached Grandma and Granddad's as they had gifts along with Uncle Mike, Nay Nay and Uncle Jimmy. Anna had a lot of work to do so we spread it out and let her play with a few things (not everything) as we went along.

A big hit was something that wasn't even for her! My mom gave Nay Nay a big bucket of cookie cutters - all different shapes, colors and sizes. Anna had a great time taking them out, pressing them up against her face and hanging with Nay Nay investigating all of the different kinds.

Luckily the remaining gifts were mostly clothes. But she surprised us with her interest in them as well. She wanted to put everything on, but luckily she settled for a cloth head band that went with a dress Uncle Jimmy and Nay Nay gave her. Everyone was shocked that she had actually asked to put it on and willingly wore it throughout the day. In fact, it annoyed me more than she since it kept coming off and she kept asking me to put it back on. Not sure when it happened, but I eventually gave up on it much later in the day!

The day was a great success. Everyone had a nice afternoon playing games and eating the nonstop goodies my mom prepared. We finally took Anna up around 9:30 pm much to her dismay. She settled down fairly quickly and slept until 6 am when the heat started to noisily clank through the pipes. I had also stayed over since Michael, Bev and I had stayed up really late talking so I simply took Anna in bed with me until almost 10 am. I couldn't believe she slept that late - Merry Christmas to me!