Twas The Week Before Christmas

With a big holiday weekend ahead with family in Appleton, Anne and Scott decided to celebrate their Christmas with Ava a week early. After her morning nap, we had her new little chair set out for her. It wasn't long before she noticed it, and approached the chair with extreme caution, as we should all learn to do around unfamiliar furniture. With her sippy cup in hand, we lifted her into her throne. The Ava was pleased. She sat there for a good four or five minutes, sipping her milk, clapping and patting the fabric.

Soon after, during a diaper and outfit change, Santa brought out the other gifts. Ava dove in with confidence, having remembered the paper-ripping techniques of her pre-season birthday event.

Ava absolutely loved all her new paper very much, as well as the beautiful box in which one of her gifts was wrapped. She flitted from chair to chair, waving her new box and shaking her torn gift wrap, stopping every now and then to tear a little piece off to share with Mom and Dad. It was all so cute and amusing.

Even more amusing was the "Fridge Phonics" Fiasco by Leap Frog. Do any of you have this? Let's go over how this thing is supposed to work, shall we? Baby places magnetic letters into a device which reads the letters and then "speaks" the letters. The whole operation sticks to the Fridge like a baby meat product on little fingers. Let's see, so when the "M" was placed in this high-tech gadget, the device said, "L." When the "S" was placed, the device said, "W." You get the idea. Fourteen out of 26 letters were incorrect. Ava is already mispronouncing simple words and phrases.

One hour later, the Fridge Phonics toy was working perfectly. We did nothing to it, however we are a little frightened by the notion that this is a toy that seems to possess an innate ability to learn and correct its mistakes.