Christmas chicken. . .

Sunday afternoon, while out little sugar plum snoozed, we put up our Christmas tree. My wife was so excited, one of her coworkers told her how her son (who's a couple months younger than ours) got so excited when he first saw the tree he almost fainted. My sweet wife even wanted to videotape our son's reaction to the tree to save if for posterity.

I thought it would scare him.

My suggestion was overruled and we erected the tree while he napped. I put up and fluffed our fake fur tree (shut-up it's a damned good fake tree), took good care to hang the lights and garland—my wife selected and carefully hung the ornaments, making sure the soft non-breakable ornaments were low and the others were out of toddler reach. The stage was set.

He woke up and, after a diaper change, his mother sent him in. The second he caught a glimpse of the tree he froze, then turned and ran, almost in tears, back to mommy and clutched her leg to be lifted up. Over the next few hours he got used to the tree, he'd point at it and exclaim to us "dat." We'd reassure him by saying "Christmas tree pretty, twinkle twinkle." To which he'd return to playing near the tree.

And things had not improved this morning. After breakfast (he didn't see the tree on the way to breakfast) I set him down so he could finish his morning milk whilst exploring the house. He walked toward the living room, saw the tree and turned around to grab me so I could protect him from the big, bad, scary Christmas Tree of Doom! I suppose a 7 foot tall tree suddenly looming over all your toys can do that to a kid.