Merry Christmas!

At first, Gabi was very excited to open presents. Once she opened one, however, she preferred to play with her new toy rather than open another. In this first picture, she decided to read her new book before pulling the next book out of the same present!

Gabi shows Lola all the animals in her new book.


Lolo gives Gabi a big hug with her new bug and blanket.


Gabi very clearly exclaimed, "Shoes! Neat!"Now she always asks to put on her "new shoes" (which often get called "new news" even though she can say "shoes" perfectly well without the adjective). She has a similar problem saying "Blue's Clues." She identifies and pronounces the color blue well, but when she puts that word into a phrase, she gets "Cooz-Cooz." To complete the pattern of doubling sounds, Gabi also calls her favorite breakfast cereal (cream of wheat) "wheat-wheat."


Gabi gave Lolo and Lola a picture of the three of them together.


Gabi got a Mommy duck and three baby ducks for Christmas.
She loves to make the Mommy duck drive the babies around
and go "Zoom! Zoom!"


"Penguins!"
Gabi loves many animals, and penguins are one of her favorites,
so these Christmas ornaments were very exciting.




Gabi was most excited about her new American Girl Bitty Baby doll.
We named her Asha, and she gets lots of attention from Gabi daily.


Daddy got a special present with a picture of him and Gabi
and a poem about "My Daddy."


Lola and Lolo read some of Gabi's new books with her.


Gabi loves to ride on her new rocking Tigger.
However, she gets a bit overzealous and can make it tip over forward,
so we need to do some engineering to extend the rocking rails in front.


No hands!
Gabi has so many fun presents! We didn't take pictures of all of them. She got a couple different phonics toys, which is a new concept for this age. Gabi loves to sing and dance along with the ABCs. She enjoys learning her letters and repeating the words that start with each letter. She thinks she can recognize G, A, B, and I, but she's not completely accurate. She also thinks she can draw a G, but it looks suspiciously like a scribble. She does, however, correctly state that both goose and Gabi begin with G (the latter we taught her, and the former she learned from her phonics toys).

The winner of the Most Random Present prize is our dear college friend Katie, who gave Gabi a Shakespeare CelebriDuck. Gabi recognizes it as "Shake-per." So, to Gabi's uncle who mailed our Christmas presents to himself instead of to us: If you got her a Shakespeare duck, you can return it; we already have one. But if you got her a Chaucer duck, send it our way. We have started a collection. ;-)


Did Lolo fall asleep again?