The Spoils

Wanna confuse a one-and-a-half -year-old?

Wrap some boxes in pretty papers, put them under a sparkling tree and tell the child, "don't touch."

Then, one day, allow her to rip all the boxes apart and keep whatever she finds inside. Do this after giving her a sock full of chocolate.
She is now under the impression that Christmas is pretty cool.
She got a pretty exciting toy kitchen, which she spends a good amount of time "cooking" in. She then brings us plastic dishes full of the imaginary food she has prepared and warns us that, in a word, it's "hooooooooooooooot." It also came with an imaginary phone, and the imaginary phone bill is likely to be astronomical she has called so many people on it already.
Ben was less confused. I think he found the whole thing kind of annoying actually, as it disrupted his routine. However, he found a few things to put in his mouth, which is always good.


Elsa is now the proud owner of a robotic penguin (because Santa was fresh out of robo-horses you can ride and feed, like she asked for, as well as out of robots who clean rooms and teach classes, I guess Santa's Elves had a slow production year).

And the three of them are co-owners of this new sweet ride. Here is footage of its maiden voyage:

Don't worry, Benjamin was not on-board. He will probably opt to wait on riding till he's mastered sitting-up solo, and if he's like Adele, that could be another six months.