O Christmas tree!

Nicholas has had fun with all of the Christmas decorating around the house. He helped me put clips on the lights for outside. He helped to hang the stockings. He helped to put out our little Christmas village with all of it's little houses and people. He even helped Daddy do some electrical work to two of the houses that wouldn't light up. Stuart is such a great Dad. He finds these teachable moments with Nicholas and takes advantage of the quality time together - even though he could get things done twice as fast without Nicholas "helping". However, Nicholas has fun learning the things that Stuart teaches him and it is such good bonding time.



Of course, the most fun was picking out and decorating the Christmas tree. Nicholas loved running through the rows of trees as if the scent of pine had a catnip effect on him! We finally picked a great tree and brought it home.

This is our first year to decorate with a lot of color. I've always had solid (not blinking) white lights on the tree with gold and burgundy ornaments, a sort of Victorian look. Outside was always solid white icicles lights and no other "gaudy" decorations in the yard. Simple and elegant. However, now that I'm a parent, I think of the Christmas tree my brother and I had when we were little. It was bright and colorful and covered with fun characters that we loved. It was so exciting each year to pull out each of the fun ornaments to put on the tree. My mom really did a great job of making it fun for us and I would do anything to still have some of those ornaments again. So now that Nicholas is here, Christmas is all about him and I have to decorate for him and not for me. So last year I took advantage of some really great after-Christmas sales (75% off!) and we stocked up on outdoor colored icicle lights, a giant inflatable carousel for the front yard, as well as colored lights and colored ornaments for the tree. We also have a few character ornaments like the whole clan from Pinnochio as well as some Star Wars and Batman ornaments. And yes, the multi-colored lights on the tree not only blink but they have 8, count them, 8 different patterns of blinking to choose from. Nicholas loves it! My old self (pre-Nicholas) shudders at the sight of it all sometimes but the Mommy in me doesn't really care as long as Nicholas is having fun. Maybe this year I'll go out looking for an after-Christmas sale on a big gaudy lighted Santa Claus and reindeer for our roof!