Christmas decorating with a 2-year old

Someone should have warned me how much longer it would take to decorate a Christmas tree with a 2-year old boy. The tree was up and half-way decorated when Quin awoke from his nap today. He came down and took a look at the tree. He uttered one word as he stared at it, “Christmas.” I guess we’ve seen enough Christmas trees and Christmas cartoons lately for him to make that association. Quin quickly looked around at all of the boxes of ornaments and such, and wondered what he could do.

I asked him to get an ornament box and bring it over to me to hang on the tree. He was pretty discriminating in what he took from his dad. Rick would ask, “Would you like this ornament, Quin?” Sometimes he gave a “YES!” and a few times a “No thanks.” After we found a spot for each ornament, I would ask Quin to put the empty boxes back into our big storage bin. He seemed to like that part, so much so that he began to put all of the boxes into the bin. I believe it took about 2 hours to get the tree situated and decorated with participation from everyone. All in all, I suppose it could have been longer. I’m just glad to report that the tree is up, stockings are hung, and Quin was able to be a part of it. Now we’ll have to start working on teaching Quin the real Christmas story and why it is we celebrate this joyous season.