Ready for Christmas!

Daniel was very excited to help us get ready for Christmas today! This morning, before we went to Grandma Mary Kay's house, Daniel helped us put some presents under the tree- his idea! (The tree skirt is all askew thanks to our cats- Daniel was so spontaneous in helping that I didn't have a chance to fix it!) He kept asking for more and more presents, and he was so good about understanding that he had to wait to rip them and that some presents were for other people. Eventually, he decided the presents would make a good tower, too. Then, this evening, before Daniel went to bed, we had to put out Santa's special key, since we don't have a chimney. Daniel talked about this key all day- he remembered quite well that "Santa can't come in, special key help"...and he was very excited to hang it on our front door at bedtime. And yes, you'll see we hung it inside...it's cold out, it was late, and Daniel doesn't know the difference-yet! We just told him it was a magic, special key and he was cool with that.

And I just have to say, Daniel has really been SO patient all week, waiting to open presents, waiting for Santa- I'm so amazed at my little boy! He LOVES our advent calendars, too. We have an adorable children's magnetic advent calendar that we use every year and Daniel has really enjoyed getting a "new magnet morrow" every day this month. It's the first thing he does every morning even before breakfast, along with lighting up our tree. Daniel also loves the advent calendar that's on my computer ("puter")- thanks to my Aunt Kathy (aka "Aunt Kaffy") for sending it to us. He looks forward to "new window" every day and practically has the whole calendar's animated windows memorized so that he can request to watch certain ones. The advent calendars have made Daniel's vocabulary expand tremendously...it's been truly amazing.

So, Christmas is finally here and we are all ready!

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!





Here's a quick video of Daniel putting presents under the tree and then telling us how many he wanted next while trying to make his fingers show the number, too! We think it's so cute how he tries to make his fingers show numbers...this is something he's really been trying to do lately.