O, Tannenbaum

We picked up our tree from Neighbor Boy, just up the road from us, at the first of the month.  I wrote to a friend recently that everything having to do with the tree--choosing it, decorating it, upkeeping and admiring it--is my favorite part of the holiday.  It's been Martigan's favorite part as well.  He doesn't understand most of what's happening this month, but the whole live-tree-indoors thing is something he can get enthused about, being the Nature Boy he is.

Living with two toddlers, all of our ornaments are crammed at the top half of the tree.  It doesn't stop them from reaching up on tip toes to pull down their favorites.  When my mother-in-law saw our tree, she said she was forced to decorate hers in the same manner back when they had "that Cody dog." I've heard stories of "that Cody dog," a big, dumb yellow lab that kept Wolfman company when he was a boy. One Christmas that dummy dog ate a glass ornament, through which he lived, but some adjustments had to be made to the tree thereafter.

 

The crow atop the tree was Wolfman's idea.

Each ornament I hang on the tree has a little story.  Here are just a particularly photographic few:

Baby's First Christmas ornaments, in pink and blue, for Ella and Martigan, side-by-side on the tree this year.  Gifts last year from their Great-Grandparents Clacher.

Early December 2012 we announced to Wolfman's dad we were expecting.  A couple weeks later, he gave us this ornament.  He may or may not have had tears in his eyes.  It gets a prominent place on the tree each year now, forever.

When I was 17, I helped pay for my dance classes by assisting at my studio in the classroom and office.  The studio director, Miss Kim, gave me this little ballerina ornament that Christmas.  She's one of a handful of ballerinas on my tree.  They remind me of a time, before baby, before husband, when I could leap in the air so freaking high.

This little teddy bear was a gift from one of those dance students in one of the classes I assisted in--little curly-haired Alyssa.  She was seven-ish and a lovely little pixie, as they all tend to be spinning with abandon in pink tights and ballet skirts.

Caught in the act, the bugger.