Christmas 2011

When we think of Christmas Eve, we think of Grandma Carolyn's house.  We always go to my Mom's house for Christmas Eve dinner and a couple of presents.  We had Bobby sit down and open his present before the "party" began since he is not a crowd person.  Everyone was in the kitchen preparing dinner and Bobby's cousins hadn't yet arrived.  He sat right down and opened his present from Grandma...

It was a gift specifically picked out to entertain him while Grandma's house was full and he was out of his comfort zone.  He has been playing with these "Magna Tiles" at occupational therapy for the past few months.  He runs right in to the therapy room, opens up the cabinet and gets the container of magna tiles out.  His OT finally has had to put them up before Bobby gets there and brings them out when Bobby has completed his work.  So I knew that these would be a hit with Bobby, but didn't realize that they would be a hit with everyone else too!

He immediately knew what they were and opened the box...

Bobby was entertained while Grandma Carolyn, Aunt Dianna, and Aunt Mimi made dinner (prime rib, manicotti, scalloped potatoes, spinach salad, brussel sprouts)...

Bobby's cousins finally arrived and Kaden was immediately drawn to the magna tiles and started to build away...

Bobby loved the structure that Kaden built...

We tried to get Bobby and Kaden to stand together to have their picture taken.  We got Kaden in place and put Bobby beside him...

Kaden did a good job posing, but Bobby was not interested.  We soon left so that the boys could go home and get to sleep so that Santa could arrive.

I went downstairs to check that Santa didn't skip by our house, and indeed he did stop.  Zoi was the watchdog to make sure all of the gifts remained untouched until Bobby woke up on Christmas morning.

Zoi smelled her stocking as soon as we came downstairs and couldn't wait!!  Bobby saw the presents but went straight to the kitchen.  He was hungry and wanted to eat. 

Toast before presents!!  I always make a big Christmas breakfast, so toast was all he got for now.  After breakfast we gave Bobby a present and said "open" and he opened away...

Daddy couldn't wait for Bobby to open this race track.  Daddy immediately took it over to the side and started putting it together.  Bobby sat down and opened his stocking...

Full of his favorite types of things.  Then a couple of more presents to open...

 He even has the paper flying in the air!!  However, he had no interest in what was actually under the wrapping paper.  He opened a few and then was done.  Too overwhelmed with all of the new.  A little later, I opened the rest and put them back under the tree so that he could get used to all of them.

While Daddy was working on putting the race track together, Bobby stopped unwrapping gifts and sat down in the middle of the track and would not move.

I did manage to get him to open just one more, but it was his last.

But he went right back to the completed race track.  He preferred to push the cars around instead of watching them race.

This year Bobby got many different types of building sets.  These are the types of toys that he generally doesn't get bored with.  I am planning to most of them away and bring a new one out every couple of weeks.  The magna tiles are the first ones that are out to play with now.

Grandma Carolyn came over in the morning after she got off of work (midnight shift on Christmas Eve-yuck!!) and opened presents with Bobby.  She went to bed for a few hours and when she got up we had Christmas dinner.  Shrimp scampi and broccoli, chicken pasta.  Bobby sat like such a good boy during dinner, even if he did eat chicken nuggets instead of pasta.  Dinner for 4 was perfect for him.

After dinner was over and the kitchen was cleaned, Bobby and Grandma played with the magna tiles.  The day after Christmas, Uncle Chris, Aunt Tiffany, Brenalin and Kinlei came over for brunch and to exhange presents.

Brenalin taking time out from opening presents to check out Bobby's new book.

Kinlei sitting on top of her gift wishing that we would open it and put it together.

Aunt Tiffany and Brenalin are enjoying the magna tiles too!!!

Bobby joined in to play (he has a chewy tube in his mouth).

All of our presents are delivered, except for Ashley's who is coming to WV later in the week.  It is a rainy yucky day so I decided to take down the Christmas tree and put back up the trampoline for Bobby since he still has a week off before school starts.  He jumped ALL DAY.  He wasn't the least bit sad to see the tree go and was thrilled to be jumping again!!!

Bobby did much, much better than last Christmas.  Hopefully next Christmas will even be better!!!