Having lived with Aidan for nearly a year, I knew I would have to keep my high expectations for an orderly, event filled holiday season at bay. Lucky thing too, because our first holiday season with our baby son ended up being an off-script comedy of errors.
We chose to spend all of the holidays at home this year, without any out of town guests. For some reason I thought that would keep the tumult of the season to a bare minimum. Not so. I knew we were in trouble when I saw my husband hauling glow-in-the-dark skiing penguins out of the attic in October. If it had stopped with the penguins, we would have been okay, but my husband takes it as a personal affront and a challenge to his masculinity when anyone within a five mile radius puts up outdoor Christmas decorations. He immediately runs out and buys more National Lampoon-inspired twinkling yard art to meet the “challenge,” as he sees it. I am more of the less-is-more school of thought, so until about two weeks ago I winced every time I saw my alighted house from two blocks away as I drove home from work. But I was all for the Christmas tree, complete with brilliant lights (the wonder of which completely escaped our unimpressed son), ornaments, and pseudo-ornaments that we had acquired from our travels back before Aidan was born and international travel was an actual, viable option.
I was all for it right up until it came crashing to the floor, spraying pine needles and bits of glass throughout our living room. Somehow, days later, my husband managed to dislodge one of the oil lamps on our dining room chandelier, and that too fell to the floor, spraying oil and bits of glass all over the dining room. We had quite the safety hazard going for our little crawler. How he managed to make it through the holidays unscathed I’ll never know. I guess it’s a Christmas miracle. Note: kerosene was once used as a dry cleaning agent, so on the upside, our dining room was dry cleaned at an exceptionally low cost.
