Christmas Morning

Christmas Morning began at 9:00 AM (yes, Daniel let us sleep in!!! Woohoo!). We brought Daniel down and sat in front of the gate-less tree with all the presents waiting...and I just LOVE his expression of joy in that first picture- that's Daniel's very first moment on Christmas morning. He just looks so excited and yet, he really has idea what is even going on. We opened a few presents, then had some breakfast (he was happy to eat, you can see!) and then we opened more presents. Daniel was mildly interested in unwrapping presents, but mostly he just walked all over the room- away from us, and back to us, he'd pick up something and away he went again. I think he was a little overwhelmed already and a little confused- the gate was gone from in front of the tree, we set aside all his toys and toy bins so they were gone, too, and there was all this space and we were doing something totally different and so he was just pretty much all over the place, and kind of buzzed up, much like Christmas Eve. But we really did have tons of fun. Daniel did finally sit with us and look at his new books, his new toys, his new snowglobe, and he even reached in his stocking and pulled stuff out- especially once he got the idea there were toys to pull out and play with. Daniel also particularly enjoyed looking at the tree, sans gate. He liked the lights most, and he tried to pull a few ornaments, but he stopped when we said no. And since Daniel did so well with the tree yesterday, we didn't put the gate back up today- it's so nice to be able to just look at the tree, and not the gate! Daniel still did well with listening and not touching the tree too much- such a good boy. After all the fun presents were opened, we cleaned up the garbage and Daniel even helped! We've really been working on "clean up" and "put in here" and even "give to (person's name)" directions and Daniel's doing pretty well. He takes such pride and joy in his work and accomplishments! We'll keep working on cleaning up, but Daniel's got a great start so far. Yay!

Then, on to Grandma Mary Kay's we went. After that, we headed to Grandma Cheryl's, too! Such a busy day!