I put up my tabletop tree on time in early December. I did move it from the small table where I normally put it to the bar where it is totally out of Abby's reach. Besides, Abby uses that table to "sort" her collection of magazines and junk mail. Abby has enjoyed pointing to the tree, watching me turn on the lights, and shouting "ball, ball, ball" in reference to the ornaments. Balls are some of her favorites toys now and ball is one of her favorite words to say.
We attempted to take our Christmas card shot in front of this tree but it wasn't happening. The tree wasn't wide enough to make a real background. And our attempts to include more than one family member didn't go very well.
We tried again at Nana Diana's house. She has a fabulous wide tree with shatterproof ornaments that coincidentally matched Abby's Christmas dress. She even had a few presents wrapped that we could use as props. We had quite a bit of trouble getting Abby to smile until we deployed the secret weapon, a tiny dog named Sampson. Luckily his appearance on the scene allowed me capture one perfect shot that became our Christmas card.
Sample Outtake
The Winning Pose
Some Runners Up
Abby got a set of pink baby girl ornaments from Aunt Pam last year. We bought Abby her own tabletop tree at an after Christmas sale last year so we could showcase the cute ornaments in her room. She loves the tree on top of her chest of drawers. If you ask her where her Christmas tree is, she will immediately point to it. After careless shopping left me with the wrong light set twice (can you imagine lights with a white wire on a green tree?), the baby girl tree lighting occurred last week before bedtime.
Still the dilemna remained about how to handle my main tree. The living room is the most Abby-friendly zone we have. She plays well in there while I'm around the corner in the kitchen. I asked a few other people what they did. I got some good ideas. One suggested only decorating above Abby's reach. But our tree is so short that would leave a huge portion undecorated. Another suggested kid-proof ornaments. I may check out some after Christmas sales and try that for next year. There was also the possibility of having just the little trees, but I couldn't stand that. I even borrowed a kiddie corral, thinking I would enclose the tree. But our living room is narrow and the corral would obstruct the flow of traffic. So ultimately I decided to put the tree up as usual but just for a few days right around Christmas.
So this morning Abby woke to the surprise of our Christmas tree in the living room. I'm not sure how much she understood when I explained to her that she could look but not touch. She wandered by it and stopped to look a few times, only reaching out to touch the enticing "balls" twice. But we didn't spend much time in the living room today. We'll see how tomorrow goes.
This is our "skinny tree". It originally belonged to my Maw-Maw when she was alive. She loved decorating and would frequently find ways to integrate something trendy or different into her mostly traditional style. I wasn't fond of the skinnyness when I first saw it as a teenager. However, the first time we put it up in our narrow living room, I began to appreciate how the tree's shape and size complimented the proportions of our living room. The decorations are the ones we bought when we moved back home. We had only had my little tabletop tree before because we were never home for Christmas back then. I found a picture of a tree I liked and then went to Walmart to get an approximation of that style. Mind you, it's not a very close approximation but the price was right.
Apparently some of the labor from Santa's workshop has been outsourced. Here's a dedicated contractor hard at work assembling a classic toy.
No comments:
Post a Comment