It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Eleanor celebrated her first Christmas of 2012 this week with Grandma and Grandpa.  She started out the week with a visit to the train exhibit at the Botanical Gardens.  The trains were nice, but Eleanor was mostly interested in the large glass doors.  We also took our official 16 months picture this week – and on Saturday I was excited to tell everyone that Eleanor had mastered stacking some larger Lego type blocks (15 blocks high), but Mom informed me that Eleanor had been doing this for a little while.  I guess she didn’t want to let on so that I wouldn’t stop building the towers for her :)  Eleanor was much more impressed with the tree once we got lights and ornaments on it, and she now likes to point out the ornament that has the family Christmas picture from last year on it.  On Saturday, Eleanor opened some Christmas presents, and unwrapped her first package.  The paper and the box were quite a bit of fun by themselves, but she was thrilled with her new tot-sized piano and also with her train set.  She sang her “duet” with a piano accompaniment, and spent a good hour playing with the new trains.  On Sunday, we opened a few more presents and she had a fun afternoon with her new dump truck and shopping cart.  She also learned to say “Ho Ho Ho” for Santa Clause!  Fun!