We put up the tree on Sunday. It took three hours, one tiny head bump, and a reorganization of our entire living room, but it's up and it's still standing as of Tuesday morning. For a house with two twenty-month-olds, I'm calling that a triumph.
Last year the twins were eight months old and mostly stationary, so we got away with a normal tree in the corner. This year they walk, climb, pull, and put everything in their mouths. June in particular has recently discovered that she can drag a dining chair across the floor to reach things. So decorating needed an actual plan.
Step one: decide what the tree is for
This sounds dramatic, but it helped. I asked myself whether the tree this year was for looking pretty or for the kids to experience. The answer was the kids. That meant I was going to lose some control over how it looked, and I needed to be okay with that before I opened a single box.
Once I made peace with a slightly lopsided, bottom-heavy tree, everything else got easier.
How we set up the tree
- Smaller tree, on a table. We skipped our usual six-foot artificial tree and bought a four-foot one for $45 on sale. It sits on a sturdy low side table wedged into the corner, which puts the lowest branches around toddler shoulder height instead of toddler mouth height.
- Anchored to the wall. Dan ran a length of clear fishing line from the trunk to a small hook in the wall. Our landlord allows small nail holes, and I'll patch it in January. The tree can get a solid tug now without tipping.
- Lights wrapped tight to the trunk on the bottom half, so there are no loose loops to grab. The plug and the cord run behind the table and under a cord cover.
- Glass ornaments stayed in the box. Every breakable ornament we own is in a bin in the closet with a note that says "2027, maybe."
The ornament strategy
The top half of the tree has our "real" ornaments, the unbreakable ones that still mean something: the little felt bird from my grandmother's tree, the wooden ornament with the twins' birth date that my mom gave us last year, the tiny HVAC truck a coworker gave Dan as a joke.
The bottom third is the kid zone. It's covered in plush and wooden ornaments that I fully expect to be taken off, carried around the house, and occasionally put back. I found a bag of fabric ornaments at a thrift store for $6. Theo has already relocated about half of them into his toy shopping cart. That's fine. That's the point.
I also made a felt tree for the wall, the kind where you stick felt ornaments on and they stay because of the texture. It cost about $12 in felt and an evening in front of the TV with scissors. It's at their height, and it's been the most-played-with decoration by far. June "decorates" it every morning and then undecorates it every afternoon.
What else went up (and where)
- Window lights on the front window, clipped to the top of the frame, cords out of reach. They're on a cheap outlet timer so they come on at 5 p.m. and off at 10.
- Stockings hung with adhesive hooks on the hallway wall, high up. We don't have a mantel, and heavy stocking holders on a shelf felt like a head injury waiting to happen.
- A small village of wooden houses on top of the bookshelf, far above climbing range.
- Board books about the holidays, rotated into the book basket. This is the lowest-effort decoration there is.
What we skipped this year
No candles. Not even the fake ones with little batteries, because button batteries and toddlers do not mix, and those lights pop open more easily than you'd think. No tinsel, which is essentially a choking hazard that also sheds. No poinsettias on the floor. No holiday tablecloth, because the twins treat every tablecloth as a rope.
I did skip one thing I actually love: the big outdoor light display Dan usually puts up along the porch rail. He works a lot of overtime in December when the cold nights start and furnaces quit, and neither of us had the energy. The front window will do.
How it's going
Three days in, here's the scorecard. The tree is upright. Two plush ornaments have gone missing and are probably in the laundry basket. Theo says "tee" every time he walks past it and points like he's discovered it for the first time. June has tried once to climb the side table and has been redirected to the felt tree roughly forty times.
The living room is more crowded than usual, and the whole setup looks a little like a daycare decorated for the holidays. But at night, when the twins are asleep and the tree lights are on and the house is quiet, it looks perfect to me.
