Decorating for Christmas

We have actually had our tree up since the beginning of December.  That is a record for us - literally crushing any past records.  I think we got last year's tree up right around the second week of Christmas.  So I've been feeling pretty accomplished to say the least.

As far as the decorations go - not so accomplished.  But that's not entirely all my fault.  Due to weekend plans and out-of-town visits we weren't actually able to decorate our tree until the second week of December.  We're evidently not truly motivated until mid-December if you haven't gathered that yet.  So Robert and I put the lights on the tree (realizing we really needed an extra strand, but instead rigged it so it wasn't noticable) and hung up all of our discount ornaments.  Just as I did last year, I looked at the tree and thought to myself, not very impressive.  What should I expect from a one-stop shopping trip to Target last year to take advantage of their "Right Before Christmas Sale."  Oh well - I'm really just waiting until I collect enough of Evan's handmade school ornaments to have the tree of my dreams.  Yes, I am a traditionalist.  I have fond memories of our tree growing up that would literally sag to the floor.   All of our handprints, popsicle stick creations, and anything we could make with yarn covered our tree year after year. Now THAT is what Christmas is all about. I hope Evan gets just as excited over arts and crafts as I did - something tells me he may not be quite as enthusiastic.

I knew all the glass balls on the tree would be somewhat equivalent to a tree full of shiny glass cars.  Evan went nuts when he saw all the balls hanging on the tree.  He does this high pitched scream thing now when he gets really excited so my ears were just a tad bit annoyed with my decision to decorate with this particular shape.  I knew it would be a struggle to keep him away - but hey - they were on sale, remember?

Just the other day was the first time I really had to reprimand Evan for taking the ornaments off the tree.  For the past week or so he would simply travel by the tree and just gaze at the balls - reach out to them - but never pulled them off.  I guess on this particular day he figured to hell with it!  His attack of the Christmas tree came to my attention when I heard a ball come crashing to the floor.  I ran over in fear that he would walk through the broken glass, but instead he ran far from the crash site screaming and crying.  I cleaned up the mess on the floor and on my way to the trash can I noticed a collection of the glittery balls on the couch.  It reminded me of the squirrels in NC that would hoard all the acorns that fell to the ground .  Well my little squirrel was still screaming and crying even after I cleaned up his mess.  I thought maybe he got a little piece of glass in his hand.  He had both fists clenched and intently stared at them while crying.  I inspected his hands - no glass.  I lathered them with soap and cleaned them off thinking he would go merrily on his way.  Not so much.  He sat there for a second - again clenching his fists - and started crying again.  I was perplexed.  I did a more thorough inspection of his hands and noticed just a few specs of glitter on his hands.  I thought to myself, oh lord, if this is the cause of this ridiculous outburst - I'm outta here!  I scraped the few pieces of glitter off his hands. He looked at his hands, looked at me and then gave me a huge smile.  Off he happily went to stare at Dora on the tv.  I couldn't believe it!

I was not aware that OCD was hereditary - is it too late to change the birth certificate to Robert Lynn Stinnett, JR.?

This incident has now left our tree looking more pathetic than ever.  The top half of the tree is is still decorated with glittery, shiny balls while the bottom half of the tree is - well - completely bare.  I figured who are we really trying to impress with our tree anyway.  My parents, who are coming down, will certainly understand the logic - I won't even go into what they had to do to keep their four hellians from pulling the tree to the floor.  So there it is - our tree is unique this year.  Maybe I can start a new trend.

One thing is for sure - no more glitter.