Decking the halls with Kalina

Christmas must be a magical time of the year for toddlers. Songs sung by Mommy switch from "The Wheels on the Bus" to "Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer", toys get bought but not played with yet and trees mystically appear in the living room after naptime.

Kalina takes it all in stride. Yesterday she cheerfully accompanied Matt and I to a Christmas tree farm to pick out our living room's latest and greenest fixture.

We pulled into the lot and unloaded Kalina from her seat. While she took note of the farm dog, we saw that the farm sold both cut trees (mostly pricey Frasier Firs from the mountains, and a few pine) and choose-and-cut trees. Wanting to make the most of our trip and wear our toddler out for her naptime later, we chose to wander the fields of cut-your-own trees. The muddy fields. The "I guess I'll never try to dress these shoes up ever again" muddy fields.

Despite the mud, we found that Christmas tree farms make wonderful places for toddler hide-and-seek--which is right up Kalina's alley. As long as I didn't go more than 20 feet away and stayed primarily within sight, she was happy to play it with me.

Although many of the trees wore blue tags, which designated them as reduced-price Charlie Brown trees, we found many nice ones. Agonizing over the decision for a good half an hour (really? should we cut our own? these are pretty nice. it doesn't have to be perfect. really? how about this one? or that one? this one is great as long as you look at it from this angle. that would be perfect if it were a foot shorter. could we cut it? no, we'd lose too much foliage. really?), we finally left the decision up to Kalina and set her loose.

She headed straight for a stump and wouldn't budge.

That and the fact that lunchtime and naptime were approaching convinced us that maybe we'd better head back to the pre-cut trees, thus chalking our field expedition up to unproductive fun.

Back at the lot, we were faced with about five minutes to make a decision, a poopy diaper, and dried-out wipes, so we decided to divide and conquer. I settled on a nice white pine tree while Matt tried to find a space in my crowded car to change the diaper, and then I changed the diaper while Matt gave the tree, which he could only hope was the right one (second from the left, right?), a thumbs-up and paid for it.

So much for a magical picture of my little girl "choosing" the tree. So much for spending more than two minutes making sure the trunk wasn't crooked, the needles weren't brown or the height wouldn't be a problem. Fortunately, the magic of Christmas smiled on us and it's quite a pretty tree.

We set it up in the living room during Kalina's nap, curious to see how she'd take the new addition.

To our slight disappointment, she gave it about as much notice as she does the stock market.

Does this mean she thinks we're always doing crazy things like dragging live trees into our living room? Have such things become commonplace?

After supper, we all decorated the tree to Christmas music. Christmas decorations can be no end of fun to a toddler, but only if you don't mind having them end up shattered on the floor (yes, one did).

Fortunately, though, some were toddler-proof and produced far more delight than the tree itself. The beads were a big hit. Kalina:
1. Scooped them up in her hands
2. Pulled a string of them around the house
3. Watched as I pulled the string around and the cat followed
4. Put them around her waist, wrists and shoulders
5. Pulled the string around for the cat to follow
6. Tried to "deck the cat" with them
7. Watched as Daddy made waves with them on the floor
8. Made waves with them on the floor

Not bad, and a physics lesson to boot.

The other big hit was the nativity scene. Utterly engrossed for several minutes, baa-ing occasionally, Kalina allowed several sheep, the dog and Baby Jesus inhabit the stable. What is she trying to tell us?

I started telling her about Baby Jesus, and Mary and Joseph, but the story got complicated pretty fast. "Where do the sheep come in?" Kalina wanted to know.

We narrowly finished decorating before bedtime--in fact some of the ornaments got veritably tossed onto the tree. Yes, Kalina helped, but she's better at finding a spot for an ornament than actually hooking it on.

And yes, she's mostly avoided climbing the tree, pulling it over onto herself, pulling any of the ornaments off or tasting the it, as far as we've seen. And, based on her Christmas music dance moves and affinity for cooled hot chocolate, I'm considering her an expert at seasonal merrymaking. Carry on, my Christmas Cutie.