A Christmas Tree Story

The weekend after is a no holds bar moment to decorate for Christmas. In my family, it is a travesty to wait until Christmas Eve to put your tree up, so of course my tree promptly went up on Sunday. This Christmas is especially special because my children are a little older and becoming more aware of when the Christmas holiday is in full swing. My son is three and my daughter is one. So of course this is exciting and new for them even though this is not their first Christmas. 

So I pull the Christmas tree out and my son's face just lights up because he remembers what's in that box. And he immediately says, "Yay! it's Christmas! I love it Mommy! I love it." And my daughter just cocks her head to the side with the look of concern regarding what we are doing with a tree in the living room. And so my son says to her, "It's Christmas Eliana, It's Christmas! Yay!" Even though she has no idea what he is talking about, she just repeats what he says with excitment. They are so cute. Both of them start jumping up and down one knowing how great Christmas is, the other just jumping for the sake of jumping. 

As I begin to pull out their Christmas stockings with their names embroidered on each one, My son, who now knows how to spell his name, points to his stocking and says, "That spells Elias." This amazes me because we've had his stocking for two years and now that he is older this old stocking suddenly becomes new to him. 

The stockings are now up, the Christmas wreath is on the door and now it's time to decorate the tree. Since my children were born, I greatly trimmed down on the number of Christmas ornaments in order to minimize chocking on or breaking of ornaments. As I hung the ornaments on the tree, my daughter who doesn't remember last year's Christmas starts calling them apples. She is so cute. For safety sake, I inform her that these are not apples, but Christmas ornaments. She of course did not care and continued to call them apples. There are only about 20 red ball-shapped ornaments, a few red poinsettas and a red Christmas skirt on a pre-lit tree. Our tree is not as glamourus as it could be, but for my children it's the most beautiful tree they have ever seen. Watching their reaction is priceless. 

It's the excitment over the little things that makes Christmas so enjoyable. At their age, my children are not consumed with getting gifts,  or writing their Christmas list. All they know is that a is sitting in the living room with apples hanging from it. As parents, the moments we share with our children are priceless, enjoy them while you can.