Opening Christmas Presents

Tori absolutely loved finally getting to rip into all those nicely wrapped packages under the tree that mom kept telling her not to touch for the past month. The only problem was that she loved each present so much that it was hard to get her to stop playing and to move onto the next one. It was just a ton of fun to have such a happy, sweet kid that was so into Christmas this year.

One of the funniest things was that she loved getting the Chicken Run DVD from her Grandpa. She wouldn't let it go and just ran around the room with it saying, "Bock, bock".

Her big gift this year was a kitchen set that she can't get enough of. I think she thinks it's Christmas every morning when she comes down and still sees the kitchen there.

Live Nativity

On Christmas eve one of our friends had a little party for those of us who couldn't travel and see family during Christmas. All of us there had little toddlers and as a part of the party they had the kids dress up and do a live nativity while we read the Christmas story. The majority of the kids were 1-2 years old so needless-to-say it was chaotic, but very cute. Tori had the part of one of the three wise men (the nativity was mainly little girls). She had a lot of fun, however, she was not a big fan of the crown (probably because mom made it a bit too tight) and it was ripped off by the time her part came up. We still thought she looked cute, though.

Nativity

Tori received an adorable Little People nativity set from her Grandma for Christmas. She has just loved playing with it. Her favorite thing is to push the button on top to make it play the song "Away in a Manger". It has also been a wonderful thing to distract her from the Christmas tree, which she is fascinated with.

Tori's videos

Tori absolutely loves watching her Signing Time and Little People DVDs. There is nothing else that will make her sit still. She takes watching them pretty seriously and does not want to be disturbed. She used to just sit and watch on the floor, but now her rocking chair has become a favorite part of watching anything on TV. If I go near the DVD player she begs me to watch "baby" (which is her name for Baby Signing Time), followed by lots of signing and saying "pease, pease". If I relent, then she proceeds to pull up her rocking chair and get comfortable.

I want to be a toy

Lately Tori loves to throw all the toys out of her basket and then climb in herself and sit there quite content. Sometimes she even piles toys back in the basket on top of herself.

Signing

We have these baby sign language videos that Tori started watching when she turned one that she absolutely loves. She can do quite a few of the signs now and she's really cute when she does them. It also makes my life easier because it's easier for me to know what she wants. I took a few pictures of her playing and tried to capture her doing some of the signs.Here she is signing book and then she goes and reads one of her favorite books (it has tons of pictures of babies in it).


Here she is signing please, which is rubbing your open hand around on your chest (I think she is particularly cute when she does this sign).

This last picture I just thought was really cute. She is talking on her phone (a favorite toy). She usually holds the phone to the back of her head when she is pretending to talk on it.