O Christmas Tree

Some of my fondest childhood memories are of my family putting up the Christmas tree.  We would make a day of it, trying to get the tree to look more beautiful that the year before.  My mom was in charge of picking where the tree would stand (we were not the kind of family that kept the tree in the same place every year) and she and my dad would orchestrate how to get the Christmas things out of the attic.  Once everything was down, my sister and I would sentimentally unpack each individually wrapped ornament.  Without missing a beat, we would fight over the really pretty ones, declaring they were "ours" while my mom chimed in that they were all hers. In the background, we baked cookies, listened to Christmas music (the Carpenters, in case you were wondering), and once the house was decorated, we would oooohhh and aahh over our work.

I have visions of the same traditions translating to my own family.  Our first year as a family of four, the boys were less than two weeks old and we were just learning how to survive as parents of twins.  We had a tree, I think, but we left it on the porch and never bothered decorating it.  Last year, our newly one year olds had some appreciation of the novelty of the holiday season but no real ability to participate.  They we able to stand in front of the tree for a few moments, maybe even take step toward it, but nothing more.  This year, I was looking forward to Brady and Brody getting in on the action.  I figured they would love finding a spot for the ornaments on the tree and that they would love Christmas music.  I figured we would skip the cookies until they are older but I planned on them being all-in for the rest of the adventure.  If you just scroll through the next few pictures, you can kind of imagine that the evening mirrored my childhood memories.

The boys were enthralled with the ornaments and the lights.  They loved taking the ornaments out of the box (not individually wrapped in my case -more like packed in the 8 stockings we display for all of the members of the family-but packed with some order and moderate care nonetheless).  They were incredibly focused on putting the ornaments on the tree.  They particularly loved the snowmen and were convinced that their hats should come off.  Once all the ornaments were on, we gave each boy a chance to put the star on top of the tree.

Picturesque and lovely, until, well, until. . .   something happened.  I'm not sure exactly what it was.  It could have been the moment we unpacked these awesome antlers that my friend bestowed to us last year.  

Or some other undefined instance, but something definitely happened and my boys went from concentrating on getting those little hooks over the branch ends to ornament-chucking monkeys who were whipping shiny red balls at my head, spinning them like airplane propellers and trying to feed them to me. 

After only a few minutes, all the ornaments that were hung 3 feet an under were on the floor. 

And we were left with this typical scene. 

It was fun and it was messy and I learned a few things.  First, IKEA sells some awesome plastic ornaments that can take any beating an almost two year old can give them.  They rock and will stay in our collection until the boys can be trusted with more delicate decorations.  Second, we can't have any ornaments within reach of the boys.  Our tree has a few ornaments clustered near the top and that's the way it is gong to be for this year.  I'm ok with it! This event was just as fun as I could have hoped, it was just fun in our own way. 

And just to show that Chris and I like to be silly too, you can see me in this photo I lightened.  We can't let the boys have all the fun!