Oh, Christmas Tree

We put our tree up the weekend after Thanksgiving. Sadly, it's artificial. Since we've been married, Patrick and I have always cut down our Christmas tree from a tree farm that Patrick worked at when he was in high school. We took Henry there his first Christmas and brought both boys last year to cut down our tree. This year I'd been putting off getting a tree. Mostly because I was worried about William and his sweet little curious fingers.I had visions of him pulling the tree on top of himself when I left the room to get his sippy cup or some other terrible thing. So for safety, we opted to put our tree in the office. We can still see the tree from the living room, the lights from the tree can be seen through all of the office windows and most importantly, there is a door that can be closed if necessary. We decided to use our artificial tree (a neighbor gave us her old tree a few years ago) since it was going to be in the office anyway.

I worried that Henry would be disappointed, or even a bit weirded out by the Christmas tree in a box that had to be assembled. But it was quite the opposite. He loved finding all of the pieces to help put together the tree. It did seem a little bit unnatural, but it was still fun. And with the Christmas music playing in the background, even this artificial tree started to feel festive. When William first brushed against the branches, he screamed and then started to cry. A tree in the house definitely freaked him out!

We waited until William was in bed and then brought up our boxes of ornaments. Henry literally put every single unbreakable ornament on the tree. For each one he pulled from the box he'd exclaim something about it. "Oh look at this!" or "This one is so cute!" I didn't expect him to stick with it for so long, but he didn't stop until the box of ornaments was empty. He did a great job hanging them; some branches are piled high with ornaments. I actually didn't even move them or rearrange any. I'm usually a little bit of a perfectionist, even with the tree. But this year I love the way the tree looks - just like a three year old decorated it.

Henry putting the star on top of the tree.

When he couldn't get it to stand up, he decided to lay it on its side.

William's first look at the tree the next morning.

Within seconds he's wearing one ornament like a necklace around his neck and he's eyeing another one to pull off next.

William loves to pull ornaments off the tree and carry them around the house. I usually make a pile of the ornaments he's pulled throughout the day. At the end of the day Henry gets to hang them back on the tree!