O Christmas Tree

We put our Christmas tree up last weekend and we decided to decorate using only lights and ornaments.  This is a big deal for me because I am a huge fan of garland and leaving it out makes me feel like Christmas is changing.  The garland is the icing on the tree, each branch draped in gaudy ropes of tinsely splendor that makes the tree look like it’s all decked out in its sparkly dress for the Miss White Trash Christmas Tree Holiday pageant.

The lack of garland isn’t the only thing that has changed Christmas; we now have a baby human around the house who has joined efforts with the cats in ruining all our decorative work.  The child, much like the cats, is simultaneously in love with, and bent on destroying, the tree.  I don’t think he has decided yet if he wants to pull it down or eat it whole, but he works on both projects with equal intensity throughout the day.  When he tires of standing up and playing in the tree, he crawls around underneath to check the water level in the tree stand and then continues the arduous task of unwrapping the presents that mama worked so hard to wrap up.  The cats leave the perimeter to the baby while they work the trunk, and all day long it’s pulling cats out of the branches and babies out of the presents and I give my patience one more day before I unplug the whole fucking mess and toss it out on the sidewalk.

It’s no longer the sight of garland or the smell of snow in the air that mark the beginning of the Christmas season around here.  It’s finding pine needles in the baby’s diaper and tiny hands and heads covered in sap.

By the way, what’s the best way to remove sap from a child’s face?  I tried hot water on a paper towel but it didn’t budge, even after rubbing for long enough to leave red patches.  I got a little caught up in the sap removal process and I forgot I was trying to remove sap from skin and not a price sticker from a CD case, and I ended up trying to scratch the sap off with my fingernail.  This is not the ideal way to clean a baby but sometimes it’s hard to remember you’re dealing with a person when they can’t talk and remind you that OW why are you scratching my fucking face, ma?  Before you know it, you’re totally involved in the task, using any possible tool at your disposal and you don’t realize until the kid’s screaming because you just went at his forehead with a brillo pad.

Relax, I didn’t use a brillo pad.  Only considered it.

On the theme of forgetful cleaning, Joey and I had noodles for lunch today and when I went to lift him out of his chair after eating, I noticed that the whole front of his overalls were covered in noodles.  I didn’t want to put him down on the floor covered in noodles, and I was holding him with both hands so I couldn’t brush or pick them off, so do you know what I did?  I held him up and shook him to make the noodles fall off his clothes.  About five seconds in I realized, holy shit, I am SHAKING A BABY!  Luckily, Joey doesn’t watch the news and therefore has no idea that he shouldn’t be shook, so he laughed the whole time like it was a fun new lunch game that mama made up.

To distract the kid from the tree for a little while this afternoon, I let him sip my herbal tea after it had cooled off.  Adult cups are a huge treat around here, and Joey would eagerly drink pureed asparagus if he got to sip it out of mama’s Incredible Hulk mug.  He sipped and sipped at the apple cinnamon tea, spilling it a little on the floor and on me and himself, but smiling up at me with delight each time I leaned the cup against his lips and tipped it gently forward so he could get at the liquid.  My heart was so full of love and I felt perfectly content in the moment.  Sitting on the floor with my son, Christmas lights twinkling in the background, sharing a cup of afternoon tea, with no one eating pine needles or pulling lights off the Christmas tree.  And then the phone rang, I put the tea cup on the counter, and my delightful child, who just moments before sat cuddled up happily in my lap giggling, launched a full-out, wall-shaking tantrum for the next fifteen minutes.

Merry Christmas, now SHUT UP.