Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree!

The first words out of Joe's mouth this morning were (you guessed it, Fans): "Can we put up the Christmas tree?" We got it out. While the bambini were awake. From then, until Ted left with the bambini in tow on a cloud of Julie's everlasting devotion, it was a glittery and shiny mess. Joe wanted to hang ornaments, so Clara did, too. Joe is capable of taking some--we stress the word some--direction; Clara, of course, is not. So Joe ferried ornaments to Ted to hang, while Clara got relegated to the carrier, where she was permitted to play with the Rottweiler jingle bell ornament. (She also played with her pink phone which she kept holding up to Julie's ear and saying, "Ello? Ello?!") That fragile peace lasted less than an hour.

After Ted and the bambini left (for Ridgedale mall as it turns out), Julie hung ornaments at a furious pace until reinforcements arrived in the form of Grandma Connie and Grandpa Charles. Grandma Connie trims a mean tree, but also has been known to spend a day doing it. Julie told her time was of the essence. Things were pretty well done by the time the bambini sailed back in, but there were enough ornaments for Joe to get his hand in it all again. Julie's heart smiled when she heard Grandma Connie giving him his first lesson in Tree Trimming According to Grandma Connie: the ornament has to dangle freely.

The tree is now trimmed. Julie finished the top up after the bambini had gone to bed. Ted helped after he saw her standing on the arm of the sofa again.*

But before that, and after nap, Clara managed to pull one ornament off, and is rather taken with turning on and off the lights. So although Joe could manage a "gentle touches" rule, and learned the word "delicate" in Christmas seasons past, we feel confident that a "no touch" rule must be the law of the season this year.

Oh but Fans, you should have seen Our Hero tonight, in his pjs, dancing around the tree, counting all the red ornaments as high as he could go, finding the purple one, and the snowmen, and the penguin and so on. Such joy.

*Longtime Fans may recall that Julie was chastised for pulling this stunt "when she was like, nine months pregnant." Let the record reflect that she was seven months pregnant:

http://joeekkers.blogspot.com/2010/02/unauthorized-cleaning.html