Tis The Season...

...to find out if I can successfully bring home a Christmas tree in the car with Silas.

The answer is, yes.

I no longer have my dear Sebring, but I guess it's for the best, as this would have been an impossible task. In our new car, I can put down two of the seats and move Silas's carseat to behind the driver's seat. That way, the tree fit in on an angle through the trunk and I got to see Silas point and smile at the visible tree top on the drive home.

Actually picking out the tree was fun too. I had to steel myself to walk right past the more expensive, taller trees and we headed to the 5-6 foot section. I'm not a huge fan of the tree shopping here in Florida, because my northern upbringing insists that I shouldn't be able to wear sandals while picking out a Christmas tree, but it was almost eighty degrees out, so here we are!

Silas liked looking at all the different trees, and I pulled out a few from the piles to show him, spinning them around while he clapped and smiled and pointed at the bald spots. The one I ended up getting was, of course, the one that he seemed to smile the most at. Now, I had Silas in a shopping cart seat, because while he can walk, he does not quite understand how to stay near me yet. I debated grabbing an employee to come get the tree for me, since I didn't think I could carry the tree and push the cart at the same time.

But, I decided I should at least give it a try first. So I lifted up the tree and put it in the cart (remember, I was at the 5-6 ft section, so it's not like this was a mega tree or anything). I pushed the cart in a short test run and nothing fell over, so I brought the tree to the front of the store, getting only a few odd looks.

My favorite part was when an older lady came into look for a small tree and Silas started waving "Hello!" to her. Waving hello is Silas's newest skill, and she smiled and waved back at him and stopped to chat for a bit, telling me about her granddaughter who was also starting to wave hello. I really love being able to share these sort of conversations with strangers. It's a lot of fun, and I like seeing the pride that parents and grandparents take in their children come through in conversation.

The store employee at the front only seemed mildly hesitant when I said I wanted to put the tree in the back of my car. I'm sure they've put many trees in smaller cars though, and indeed, it was no problem to fit the small fir tree into the trunk of the car.

I think that the hardest part of the day was trying to stand the tree up and secure it in the base all by myself once we got home, while Silas did his best to "help." The tree only fell over once during this process (obviously I kept it from going towards Silas; thank goodness for small, "easy-to-handle" trees) and when it was set up straight, decorating with Silas was fun.

First, he tried to suck on the Christmas lights, because I have the slightly larger teardrop style lights. After I put an end to that, he started trying to unwind the lights once I put them on the tree. I gave him the plastic ball ornaments to unpack, and he set to this task vigorously. I had gotten the non-breakable ornaments three years back, before I even had a Silas to think about, and I'm glad I did. They might not shine as nicely as glass ornaments, but I do appreciate the peace of mind that if Silas grabs a hold of one roughly, he won't end up with shards of glass everywhere.

All in all, the bottom of the tree is already a mess from Silas checking everything out. He had to pull the lights and garland and the bottom branches. But he seems to have accepted that this tree is now just part of our household decoration and he's MOSTLY leaving it be. Now that I've written that, I can only imagine what he will do when he wakes up tomorrow.