On the 1st day of December

We started putting up the Christmas tree. It's perched on E's train table and it fills up the picture window quite beautifully. The only thing is, it's a fake tree. We bought it two years ago (or is it three?) because we were tired of the dried out and remarkably expensive trees that we'd been getting. Also, a friend and co-worker of D's had convinced him it was the way to go, and so I bought one in the post-Christmas discount extravaganza that is Target on the 26th of December. And while it's a nice enough tree, it's not really a tree. But whatever. As soon as the kids care enough, we're making hot cocoa, trudging deep into national forest and chop, chop, chopping one down.

As D was bringing up the boxes of ornaments, it dawned on me that 90% of the ornaments we have acquired over the last decade are glass. Some of them were given to us, some of them I bought at the really cool two-story Target with the TVC Labettes on a loooong lunch, and some are sentimental, like the ornament we bought one year at Steamboat (I think that was the year we slept in the truck and woke up to the silliest powder ever.) The most sentimental ones, however, are the ones that we made in 2007. One is an imprint of E's tiny little hand, and the other is of his foot. But once I remembered that I'd been smart enough to pack those in their own box, I relaxed. And quite frankly, I surprised myself when I realized that I really didn't care if some of them broke (the glass ones, not the sentimental ones.) I've slowly become ok with the inevitable carnage that comes with having a two-and-a-half year old boy. Screw it, I say. Because it's a lot more enjoyable to be relaxed and put up ornaments than to wig out and frantically micro-manage what should be a fun evening with the family.

And boy, was it fun. E was so excited. It was right out of the movies - E dove into the first box of ornaments with gusto and the contents of the box went a'flying. I ran back into the kitchen to finish cleaning up and heard D mutter, "Oh no. We've got a man down." We lost a Santa. Luckily, the jingle bell on a ribbon and the 30 feet of beads caught his fancy and we only lost a total of 2 ornaments...so far. And the next morning, he is still running around with a bell on a ribbon slung across his shoulder. Reminds me of the days that I considered belling him in public so that I could keep track of him. Ah, those were the days...

So I let E put up ornaments. And put them up he did. Even the glass ornaments. And this is what he did with them. It was so worth it.