Having Fun with His Christmas Presents

Well, the first part of Christmas is over, and Eric has been enjoying his presents for the last few days.  We gave him his biggest present, his slide/house on Christmas day.  Mauri and I put it together outside, but decided that he would be able to enjoy it more inside, so it now occupies the better part of our living room.  Eric seems to really like it.

We didn't think that Eric would be old enough to actually go down the slide by himself, but we soon learned that not only could he do it, but he loves going down it.  Luckily he can't go up the slide by himself, though. Instead he keeps calling to us to have us help him up the slide so that he can keep going down.

The rest of the time, he enjoys playing with the house part.  As usual, his favorite part is the door, and he loves opening and closing it over and over again. 

At other times, he plays with his other presents inside the house part.  I ended up saving most of his presents for Kings Day because Noa, my niece, hadn't brought that many presents to our house, where we celebrated Christmas Eve.  He did open an aquadoodle pad and a Mickey Mouse drum that night, though, and seemed to be especially happy with the drum.  I think the aquadoodle is still a bit above his level, but I'm sure he'll love it in a few more months.

 On the second day of Christmas, Mauri had the day off, and we went out for lunch.  Later on in the evening Maite stopped by with another present for Eric, a Fisher Price doodle pad, which is basically a magnetic doodle toy.  Surprisingly, Eric has been playing a little bit with that. (I figured he'd still be a little too young for it.) He hasn't really used the pen part, but has used the magnetic shapes that come with the board to draw on it.  Even more fun, though, is the slider that erases whatever you have drawn on it.  Eric enjoys sliding it back and forth.

That said, although he seems to really like his presents, it seems like he almost always prefers to play with the boxes they come in than he does with the actual gifts.  I had forgotten that they were going to send us a free gift with the slide/house.  It was a Spongebob backpack with wheels, and it came in a separate box.

So, while we were busy setting up Eric's house, he was busy jumping up and down off the box that the backapck was in.  Once we got the wall with the door up, though, he was (thankfully) drawn away from the box to the house.

What else is new?
Over the last few days, Eric has been starting to drink out of cups by himself, and he's very proud of his new skill.  He's also much better at running, and loves to try to outrun me.  He gets faster and faster all of the time.  His personality is also developing quite a bit, and his emotions are stronger than ever.

Trying out the tunnel that came with my house

That means that he laughs a lot at the things we say and do, but he also gets mad at us very easily.  He is now at a phase where he likes to throw temper tantrums whenever I don't let him do what he wants.  That makes it much more difficult to take him places because I'm not sure how he'll behave.  I guess I´ll just have to get used to that for now.  There are frustrating times, but most of the time, he's very fun to be around lately.

 

 I'll sign off for now with some pictures of a few goodies I made to try to make Christmas here seem a bit more Christmas-y.

My crab dip cheese ball snowman

My peppermint truffles mixed with some store-bought chocolates

I hope you all had a great Christmas too.  We, of course, still have more to come...
Kings day is still to come!!