Merry Christmas in five bullets

It is 12:03am and technically no longer Christmas Day. We had a wonderful day. Mae got up at 7:30am and I came up to see her face when she noticed the Christmas tree. The funny thing is that she did not notice it right away. Yesterday the nanny gave Mae a baby doll, which was the #1 thing on Mae's wish list. Mae loves that doll and I gave her a Christmas box to use as a doll crib. So this morning she came out of room with her doll in the box and walked right toward the tree but didn't notice a thing as she only had eyes for her doll. She set her doll on the sofa and went back to her room for a blanket. It was only when she emerged with the blanket that she finally noticed the tree with all the presents underneath. She stopped short and the blanket dropped from her hand. She could only speak in stutters.

"Wha..."

"Loo..."

"Izza..."

And then I hugged her and said, MERRY CHRISTMAS, MAE!!!

She ran to get Libby, but Libby refused to wake up for another hour.

Website I'm grateful for: toysrus.com. I bought some last minute gifts online and they had amazing prices and free, fast shipping. It's been incessant rainfall here for the last couple of weeks, flooding and all that, and it's nice not to have to drive. The funny thing is that I needed to use the site to get a baby doll for Mae and then she ended up preferring the one that the nanny gave her on Christmas Eve, so now I have this extra baby doll still in the box. I am really glad I didn't have to pay for rush shipping or an inflated price to get that doll.

Toy I'm grateful for: the Battat cat-shaped keyboard. Mae played with this when she and I were in Barnes & Noble the other day. I thought it was terribly annoying at the time, especially because her most favorite setting is where the keys actually "meow" when you play them. But then my dad sent a B&N gift card and I remembered how much fun she was having with it, so I showed it to Mike and he loved it. We got that and a similar instrument by the same company - a frog-themed electric drum. Well, Libby and Mae played with these instruments all day, from the moment they saw them under the tree until they went to bed a couple hours ago. They took a few breaks to play with their new walkie-talkies, baby dolls, and kinetic sand, but then went back to the music.

Photo of aftermath - and there is Mae playing the cat keyboard:

Book I'm reading: The Man Who Invented Christmas (biography of Charles Dickens)