Laurel survived her first Christmas with a tree and all the trimmings. It was harder than I thought to get pictures of her opening gifts --she started out trying to put on new clothes over what she was wearing and proceeded to ignore everything else for over an hour after she opened a Tickle Me Elmo Surprise. (Speaking of which, the packaging takes far too long to open when there's an antsy 17-month old wanting Elmo now.)

It'll take us awhile for her to wear every new outfit once, but she's already very talkative with her new books. I don't know what happened to the carrying handles on the outsized version of The Very Hungry Caterpillar, but it's fun to read because it came with a little stuffed caterpillar that fits through the holes in the pages. She also seems to think a giant teddy bear she was given is like one of her uncles -- she's prone to tackling it and otherwise trying to wrestle with it. (:

We had to put the tree outside after all the presents were opened.Before Christmas, Laurel had dropped a few plastic toys into the water in the tree stand, but once she had clear access to it, she wiggled right up to the tree stand, stuck her hand in the water, and slurped it off. We didn't add anything to the water for the tree's sake, but it still wasn't a good thing for Laurel to be doing so we removed that temptation! Other than that she did really well with her first tree.

One more thing: putting together the desk I'd bought back in September was much more satisfying than anything else that happened on Christmas Day, although the phone call came close. (: