The Day of Presents...I Mean Christmas!

Christmas morning. We slept until around 9 am. I think this year and maybe next year we'll be able to do that, but after that I think we'll be doing the "as soon as it's light out" Christmas mornings.

Before Natalie opened presents, she requested a story. She loves books and particularly loves this book because one of the stories has a lizard in it.


After the story we made breakfast - the usual toaster Kashi blueberry waffles. We then went to the couch and I had her open her first gift. This gift came from her friend Maggie (Diana's little girl). She loves shoes (or slippers - she doesn't know the difference). She loves monkeys (monkey heads on the slippers). And she now loves her monkey shoes! Thanks Maggie!



After the excitement of opening her monkey slippers, she thought she'd take another break and read again. This time by herself in her reading corner. It was as if she didn't know she had more presents to open!


So I pulled her away from her books (What? Bad mom!) and "made" her pull out her presents in her stocking. Because of her love of toothbrushes, she got a Barbie toothbrush. I think she was confused as to why there was a lady stuck to her toothbrush. Oh well. Grandma Narducci put a Hello Kitty toothbrush in her stocking and she seems to not be as afraid of it.


Here's Mike opening up his stocking presents. Lucky guy. He got Listerine and various other hygiene related gifts. It seriously made him wonder if he had a hygiene problem and that I was gently trying to tell him about it.


After stockings Natalie opened a gift from us that was actually wrapped in paper. She hasn't been excited about wrapping paper in the past, but this time she finally enjoyed ripping it off. So the next (long) series of photos are of Natalie opening her gift. I really should have just videotaped it. Too late.









They are hippo hand puppets. She LOVES hippos thanks to Baby Einstein. And like I thought, she loves these puppets. They actually are bath toys. You fill up a little bladder inside the puppet with bath water and squirt it out through the mouth. We haven't used them in the bath yet, but I'm sure she'll get a kick out of them!






This is Natalie telling us what a Hippo says. She also kisses like this when we tell her to "give a hippo kiss". This also came from the Baby Einstein video. She is copying a little girl who opens her mouth wide like this as she imitates the hippos in the video.


Mike is now opening his one and only gift from me with the help of Natalie now that she likes opening presents. So exciting! He never wants anything. Whenever I do buy him something - because he seriously doesn't want anything - he usually isn't excited about. So this year I decided to not buy anything...until I saw this. I figured he'd at least kind of like it enough to warrant it's purchase.


Because of it's size and packaging, I had to fill the box I wrapped it in with magazines to throw him off.



It worked! It was a surprise! He watched it that morning. Mikey, he likes it!


Stunning.


Even more stunning, I know, is this picture of me with my new purse! Yeah! I think I am now at a point that I can leave the house without a HUGE diaper bag to carry. This purse looks like it is the perfect size to fit a few necessities for Natalie in it. Thanks Mike.


I also received this funky apron and hot pad from Diana. Love it!


We also gave Natalie the shopping cart we bought for her for her birthday. We decided to not give it to her (she got way too much already) and were going to take it back but realized that it might be a good Christmas present. It was! She even helped put it together. She loves tools. I think I'll surprise her with a tool box one of these days.



Later that afternoon Alisa and kids came over for a bit. They then went to Lee's house and we went to the Narducci's. Here is Natalie opening one of MANY gifts she was given that night. Lucky girl!


Well, one of the gifts that I put on my wish list was a DVD player. Ours broke forever ago. We've been using this cheap portable CD player hooked up to our TV to play Natalie's videos. It works most of the time... Well I got my DVD player! Yippee! So now Natalie has her own portable laptop DVD player. Seriously. She couldn't have it any better.

Well we had an awesome Christmas. We hope you did as well! Sorry for the huge amounts of pictures. I couldn't decide which ones to leave out. It's too easy to take too many pictures in this new digital age. And to share them is even easier, thanks to blogger.com.

To end this long post, here's a video of Natalie having some fun. This was taken this past Sunday. She asked for more, so it can't be considered abuse, right?