Santa Brought a Tricycle!

Yes, I know it's still 19 days until Christmas. But since we're flying out early next Saturday, we decided to have a mini-Christmas for our family today, with the presents we weren't going to pack along with us on our trip back to the US.
And the biggest of those was...Madeline's first bike! Okay, trike, but still, it was exciting. Thanks to Murphy's Law, the camcorder was inexplicably not working, so all we have are some photos, but that's better than nothing.

The tree (yes, we need to get a star for the top of it)...

The trike...

First sight...

Whee!!...

Hell's Angels, watch out?!?...

And here she is, all ready for her first ride outside. She has a lot of fun making the horn honk, and it's very, very loud. Sigh. At least we bought a trike with a parent handle, since she has yet to learn the finer points of pedaling or steering! All things with time and practice, right?

So, one final funny story about our "Christmas" day: We used Madeline's nap this afternoon to get everything ready (assemble the trike, put the presents out, etc.) since we've told her Santa brings presents while you're asleep. When she woke up, Bill was busy finishing up a project outside, so I told her we had to wait upstairs for Daddy, since Santa had come while she was sleeping. Well, she decided she did NOT want to go downstairs. Eventually I figured out it was because she thought Santa was still down there! So I told her that Santa wasn't there any more: he'd gone bye-bye, but had left the presents for her. Then she was all ready to head down the stairs and check it out. Evidently, while she's all about Santa Claus in the abstract, or in photos, or TV, she is not so sure about hanging out with him in her house, face-to-face!