Christmas Decorating with a Toddler

All the Christmas stuff that has been up in all the stores and decorations everywhere were annoying in November, but now that it's December it's time to get to decorating.

To say that we have a lot of Christmas decorations is a bit of an understatement.  Our walk-in closet in our back room is half full with those big rubbermaid tubs chock full of decorations.  The funny thing is that they were mostly J's from before we even met. He LOVES Christmas decorations.  Anyway, we have a lot and this weekend we dragged them all out and dug in.

First up was the tree. Now, I'd like to be able to say that we took a nice little family trip to some quaint local Christmas tree farm and spent the afternoon picking out the perfect one, but yeah - we went to Lowes.

We were in and out in under 30 minutes and on our way home with our 9' tree.  We waited until Andrew was down for the night before we tackled bringing it into the house figuring it would be easier without him under our feet.  Thankfully we got it up pretty easily (and it's still standing).

In the morning Andrew was very interested in the new addition to the living room - and probably wondering what happened to all his toys.

We let it stand without any decorations until he went down for his nap. There was no way I was going to try to put lights on the tree with him running around yanking them back off.  He took a nice long nap which gave us plenty of time to get the 9 strings of lights on (it's a big tree) and the tons of ornaments.  Then it was time to wake up the munchkin and give him a look.  He wasn't overly impressed:

He was much more interested in climbing all over the tubs and finding himself a fun new seat:

That tub will obviously not be out all month, but for right now it is his favorite seat in the house.  He likes to sit on it and try to poke at the Snoopy, which will have to be relocated outside before he pulls all the fuzz off his hat.  Luckily so far he has left the tree alone.  He does like to point out the bulbs close to the bottom, yelling "Ball!" every time he notices one, but for now he is leaving them on the tree.  It helps that daycare has their tree up already and they are good with 'No touch." when he gets near it.

One thing that he is allowed to play with is the singing and dancing Santa.  I bought it a few years ago just because I thought it was hilarious. last year it kind of scared him, but this year he is enthralled by it. And he figured out how to press his hand to turn him on and off.  I'm not exaggerating when I say he sat and did this for 20 minutes last night:

He doesn't let Santa get very far in his song and instead of dancing he is laying on his back practically having a seizure.  We finally  made him drop Santa and go to bed last night.  J relocated Santa to the foyer and Andrew didn't discover him this morning (he did go running into the living room and I assume he was looking for him), but I'm sure he'll be back at it tonight. Now the question is, how long will those batteries last???

I guess as long as Santa keeps him out of the tree I'll be grateful. Now if only I could get "You better watch out, you better not cry..." out of my head.