Toddler Tales Tuesday

12/1 My husband and I decided to go with a fake Christmas tree for a few years until the kids are older. He and I always wind up having the discussion where, we are making plans for our half a day's drive to spend Christmas with my parents, and he asks me why do we need a tree here if we're not even going to be here? Then I try again to find a way to explain to him the importance of having the tree even if we're not here to open gifts under it. (I.e. why it's important to have it even if we don't open gifts under it so that the kids get the symbolism of it and don't think that all it is is a gift-receptacle which, if we aren't opening gifts under it, then it has no purpose at all.) Then he brings us home a nice tree because he loves me and not because he really "gets" why it's important to me. Plus you know how fun it is to discover you've forgotten to water the tree and there are now about 50 trillion needles in your carpet which will clog your vacuum cleaner so instead you spend all day on hands and knees with a wisk broom and dustpan, picking them out of the carpet. Add to the fun two toddlers taste testing the needles faster than you can dispose of them... and well, it just seemed like a good idea to have a fake tree until the kids are old enough to care. So last night my dear husband bought us a fake tree. Doing so made him late getting home and kids were already in bed, so Chicklet (3 years 2.5 months old) didn't see the large box until this morning. She stood there staring at it. I said, "It's a big box, huh?" She replied, "BIG big box!" I asked her, "What do you suppose is in this big big box?" I did not expect her to remember Christmas trees from last year. She was only 2 after all. Then again, she had gotten extreemly excited about Christmas lights last year and has been pointing them out whenever we drive past a home that leaves their lights up all year so maybe. Chicklet examined the side of the box for a brief second, noted the picture of somebody's living room with a Christmas tree in the center, and replied, "It's a Christmas Tree!!!!!!!!!!!! Can I open it?" I told her that we would open it as a family when Daddy gets home. So all day since then she's been talking to herself saying things like, "Daddy coming home later. Daddy will open the big box. Daddy will be home soon. When Daddy is home we can open the Christmas tree..." I think she might be a bit excited, what do you think? ;)

12/2 Last night when my hubby got home and set up the Christmas tree Chicklet hovered around her Daddy like a fly on a ... you know. She was SUPER excited and had to be in the middle of the action. Then this morning when Bug (1 1/4 years old) woke up and I brought him out to the living room, his bottle literally fell out of his mouth in shock when he saw the tree. He stared at it, pointing and opening and closing his mouth, for a minute or two. Then he proceeded to ask, "Issit?" over and over for the next hour pointing to individual lights and twigs of the tree. I dutifully sat on the couch beside the tree with him in my lap for the whole hour replying appropriately, "That is a red light. That is a branch of the Christmas tree. That is still a branch of the Christmas tree. That is a green light. That is a blue light. That is yet another branch of the Christmas tree. That is a yellow light. Yes that is even yet another part of the Christmas tree..." I don't feel it was an hour wasted. :) It was a wonderful dreamy hour with one kid in my lap and one on the floor at my feet just enjoying the Christmas tree together. That right there makes it worth the price of buying a tree.

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If you have a sweet, cute, or funny Toddler (or kid) story, I'd love it if you'd share it! :)
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