Finally, The Fennell Christmas Story

I figure seeing as tomorrow is New Year's Eve, it is now or never in terms of getting a post up about Christmas Day at the Fennells' Massachusetts home. We didn't get too many great photos this year, and hardly any of poor Teia (we should start saving for her future psychotherapy bills now!). But considering that Greg and I didn't get to our own gifts until 10 at night on Christmas Day, it is a wonder we got any photos taken at all! Christmas Day was a frenzy of activity at our house as we guided Kai through as much present opening as we could, fed and napped Teia, cooked turkey, played in the snow and tried to keep the mess to a manageable disaster.

Relaxing it was not, but we definitely enjoyed seeing Kai experience the first Christmas that he understood (well, understand is used as a relative term here). When he woke on Christmas morning, I had to explain that Santa wasn't downstairs but Kai decided to check each room when he came down, just in case, and then checked to see that Santa had eaten his cookies, drank his egg nog and that Rudolph and the other reindeer had eaten their healthy carrot snack. This was also the year that Kai realized that the presents inside the boxes and wrapping paper were more interesting than the wrapping paper itself. Having said that, it still took SIX days for Kai to open all of his gifts. We sort of expected this so we started on the 23rd with a few gifts each day and still didn't finish until Dec. 29th! He seemed to really enjoy the small gifts best: an electric spider man toothbrush that Santa left in his stocking (if I'd known the improvement in dental hygiene that it would bring, I would have bought one a long time ago!), Thomas the Train socks, mittens that look like lions, a tube of m&ms, the various puzzles he received, and of course a bunny. The bunny Santa left for Kai has been welcomed into the bunny family and dubbed "isfmasf bunny." Like last year, I imagine he'll grow into a few of his other gifts as the year goes on. In the meantime, Greg is enjoying them! He really can't wait for next year as Kai's Christmas list and his own will start to look more alike!

Here is a picture of our little man playing with the house that Santa left for him. As you'll see in the video below, he thought the ringing doorbell was pretty cool (somehow I screwed up the placement of the video so it is at the bottom of this blog post).

Here is the little man with some of his Christmas loot!

A Fennell family Christmas tradition is a Christmas morning breakfast of crepes served with nutella (of course), fruit, and whipped cream. You can see the delight and anticipation on Kai's face as he looks at his whipped cream laden breakfast! A Christmas Eve tradition is chocolate fondue and this year we decided we'd let Kai in on the fun. He liked it quite a bit and in fact, he looked at me after dinner tonight with a big smile on his face and said quite clearly "Kai wants coklate fondue."

Santa brought Teia a bouncy seat and as you can see, it was a hit with both of our kiddos!

We had some pretty special moments over the holidays: Kai has decided that he likes Teia enough to start kissing her. We had a visit from Grandma Barbie and Poppa Mike; Greg and I got to spend a rare few hours together out of the house, and thanks to the technology of Skype, we got to visit with family and a special treat was an afternoon Skype with Uncle Meeko who is home from Afghanistan for the Christmas holidays.

In case we don't get a New Years post up, Happy New Year to All!