-- Posted from my iPhone, with apologies for any typos.
Calling All Mothers: Advice!
All right, mothers. The Christmas season is in full swing tomorrow and I have a question! How do I have both a baby and a Christmas tree? Appropriate answers do not include having a tree on a table because I'm not going to do that for ten years and because we have a tree that we bought last year. So please share with me your collective experience and advice!
-- Posted from my iPhone, with apologies for any typos.
-- Posted from my iPhone, with apologies for any typos.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
13 comments:
Tack it to the ceiling so it can't fall over and don't put fragile ornaments on it. Don't put any ornaments on the bottom third or so either (wherever he can reach) or use soft ones he can rearrange himself. Or you can buy one of those play-yard things and gate off the entire tree. Don't put any presents underneath until Christmas Eve.
My mom had a bunch of cool fabric ornaments she had made when we were little, like brown corduroy gingerbread men. Stuff like that or plastic is great for kids. You can also find kid-friendly plastic or cloth nativity scenes.
well, in the past i've just put ornaments on the top of the tree, but it was pretty ugly. I saw this etsy shop that has retro looking ornaments made of felt. Seems relatively easy to make something similar.
http://www.etsy.com/shop/rikrak
so far I haven't had the tree fall over, and they are kind of pokey (is that a real word?) so my kids don't tend to touch ours much. They just go for the ornaments so unless you attach the ornaments really well, i think they'd have a hard time toppling a tree especially since they can only reach the lower half where it seems some physics law would dictate it to be harder to knock over from the bottom.
was that a run-on?
What foxyj said.
We got all shatterproof and felt ornaments and just live with the fact that the bottom 2 feet would be "redecorated" daily.
We skipped out on all metal hooks for ornaments. I set them in the branches or used ribbon to attach them. I made them easy to get off the tree so that the baby wont pull the tree over to get at an ornament.
Yeah...our tree has a bunch of plastic bulbs on it - we just made sure the fragile stuff was on top and put the plastic and plush (I confess to having both a Tigger and a Stitch on my tree...) stuff at the bottom. Little Miss LOVED redecorating, or even tossing the bulbs around - who knew they bounce?(IKEA!!)
The reality goes thussly:
he will pull it over on himself at least 3 or 4 times before the season is over and you will become a helicopter parent making sure it doesn't happen more often than that.
save all the ornaments, they will be broken and chewed on unless they are above the 3 foot range.
best of luck!
I was really surprised last year that my little one (who was almost 1) really left it alone for the most part. I had gingerbread ornaments and little stockings on the bottom two layers of ornaments and she pulled those off a few times, but we never had a problem with anything else. She didn't even try to unwrap presents or anything. She pulled a gift tag off one, but that was it.
This year I'm more worried - she's a WHOLE lot busier and a lot more mobile. We might have to get a gate for the tree.
I made barriers. I used large boxes, wrapped them in coordinating paper, and made barriers around the tree. The boxes were empty, or had books in them so they were hard to move around. The plus is that under your tree looks overflowing and lovely. This stopped Proximo when he was the same age as Gulliver.
And then you have to remember that things will get rearranged and the only time it will look right is the night you put on the ornaments. Your tree will probably crash and you will probably cry.
my niece was terrified of the christmas tree. the lights and the pokiness freaked her out, and she wouldn't go near it. maybe gulliver will surprise you? other than that, i'm with the other who said put ornaments he's allowed to touch at the bottom. with my daughter, i've found that if i get all hovery and try to keep her from touching things, she just wants it even more. but if she feels like she's allowed to play with the things she can reach, then she comes and goes and it less interested in the tree.
that should be "otherS who said" and "IS less interested."
Coscto, Tai Pan and other places have no-shatter plastic ornaments that are quite pretty. I've also found plastic and metal ornaments that don't break.
I don't do the wrap-around garland since Bart would use it, lasso-like, to haul the tree over. I usually cascade ribbons down the tree. But you could also cut your garland so it meets in the back of the tree instead of going around and around. Did that make sense?
The bottom third of the tree gets re-decorated every day but I move everything back if it bothers me. The special ornaments are just at the top.
I put out all the presents on Christmas Eve so there's no boxes to tear apart.
Bart is almost 4 and this year he hasn't had a lot of interest in the tree and leaves it alone. So there's hope!
When we were young, my mom would put a baby "fence" around the tree so we couldn't get to it. It looked pretty, not tacky. It was literally a circle that opened up as big or as small as you needed it and she just put it around the tree. It worked for us.
I have heard of people putting a train around the tree - looks festive and is much more entertaining than boring balls on a tree.
Lou isn't crawling yet, but probably will be by Christmas -- I think I am going with JetSet's advice
Post a Comment