“Um, Mommy? There’s a tree in the family room.”

On Tuesday, after having bought and set up the Christmas tree Monday night, I got busy with the task of putting lights on the tree during Leah’s nap so that we could do the ornaments that night. It almost didn’t happen because, well, Christmas lights hate me. No, seriously. I’m pretty sure of it. It was not a pretty sight, I’m sure, as I wrestled with it all and tried to make it look as good as I could. It finally got done…and the only thing that made it worth it was seeing Leah’s eyes pop open in wonderment when we came down the stairs when she woke up. She was astounded, I think, that the strange tree that had moved into the house was then, of all things, all lit up. As if it couldn’t get any stranger.

I was concerned, naturally, with how she would handle the new addition to our decor. To my pleasant surprise, though, she wasn’t very interested in it. She looked at it for a quick second when we first came downstairs, but after that, she wasn’t impressed. She played nearby and walked all around it, generally ignoring it for a couple of hours.

Eventually, though, she decided that maybe this new thing could possibly be something worth checking out, and she ventured closer. She poked and prodded at the lights for a second or two, giggled and flinched when the needles touched her, and then moved on. (No, I didn’t intentionally take the above picture with the star on top of her head. I honestly didn’t realize it was like that in the picture until I looked at it later.)

“Could it be?” I thought. “Can it be this easy to keep her away from the tree? Will she really not be interested in it? Are we really that lucky?”

Stay tuned tomorrow for what happened next….