Leya's First Christmas

Here at Chez Bilbo, as you know by now, we celebrate Christmas in the German style - we exchange gifts on Christmas Eve. Christmas being a time for the family, we were happy to have our daughter Yasmin, son-in-law Vin, and newest granddaughter Leya with us to celebrate Leya's first Christmas. It would have been better had we been able to have all the grandchildren together, but you can't have everything, and we had a grand time in any case.

Here is Happy Leya with Grandma and Grandpa:


The tree was gaily decorated and had all the presents ready. As you might suspect, most of the packages were for Leya...


With all the things going on around her, Leya was pretty seriously overstimulated for much of the day. She was very tired, but absolutely didn't want to take a nap and miss anything. We finally got her to sleep by serenading her ... with the vacuum cleaner. Yes, the low, steady roar of our trusty Dyson did what hours of walking her couldn't do - lull her to sleep so that we could eat dinner in peace and quiet:


By the time dinner was over and we were ready to open gifts, though, she'd turned fairly cranky again. We did manage to interest her in a few pieces of colorful wrapping paper, a stuffed hoot-owl, and a soft bear. She liked the bear enough that she was willing - for a few minutes - to quit trying to tear off her little Santa hat...


And it was, of course, also Christmas for the dogs ... although they weren't especially interested in the proceedings ...


And so we had a wonderful Christmas ... and hope you have the same.

Have a good Christmas Day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo