Last night I experienced a #MomFail I never thought I would get upset about. This story is actually pretty ridiculous but I need to share it with someone else so they can possibly share their disastrous Christmas tree story and make me feel better.
I decided that last night, I was going to pull all my Christmas decorations upstairs from the dusty basement. I am not the least bit crafty. I can’t make a wreath or gingerbread houses or even tie a bow that looks full and pretty. It just isn’t my thing. But I have always liked my Christmas tree. It always looks cute and is worthy of a picture or two. It is in no way Martha Stewart material but it isn’t embarrassing like most of my crafting fails.
I was pretty excited because we inherited a new tree a few months ago. The one we had been using was actually my parents when I was little. It came in about 75 pieces and took an hour to assemble. There were still little pieces of silver tinsel all over it from the nineties.
The new tree we inherited came from Logan’s parents. It is one of those nice, tall, pre-lit ones. I guess everyone has these now but I was pretty pumped since our old tree was born in the eighties. I had Logan bring it upstairs from the basement and put it in the dining room. I went down and grabbed all the ornaments and was ready to get my decorate on.
My two year old Henry decided it was time to get his decorate on too. Don’t ask me why I didn’t plug the tree in first thing to make sure all the lights worked. Henry was just so excited to start putting ornaments on, that I got excited and we just started hanging them everywhere.
Henry was only one last year and he really didn’t mess with the tree too much so it had not even crossed my mind that I needed to invest in shatter proof, plastic ornaments. Like an idiot, I opened up the ornament box and we just started digging in. Henry was so excited that he held the first ornament he touched waaayyyy too tight and it shattered in his little fat, sweaty toddler hands. He said, “Uh oh Mama, it broken!” and looked really sad. It broke my little heart for him. I picked up the pieces and we got back to work.
From this point on I made sure he only touched metal ornaments. He hung all of them on the exact same branch, right on top of each other. I know this sounds horrible, but when he wasn’t looking I would move them around. He had no idea and continued to pile his ornaments all in the same place. He was really proud of himself and it was freaking adorable.
Then I turned my head and he got into the box. When I turned around he had two breakable ornaments, one in each hand. I feel like I was screaming “NOOOO” in slow motion as I watched him place them on his favorite branch. It was starting to get a little weighed down and they slid off the branch, onto the floor and shattered. I got another, “Uh oh Mama,” and his little eyes started to tear up. It broke my heart as I picked up the pieces. I told him it was okay, I know he didn’t mean to. But deep down, I was kind of sad because I really loved those ornaments. They were actually my favorite. I know – this makes me feel like a horrible mom!
But next is even worse. When he got up to the broken ornament count of six, I decided it was time to pull him off tree duty. I KNOW! I am so mean! I got him into his playroom and interested in his blocks. I snuck away to finish decorating. It was then I thought, “Oh yeah, I should probably plug the tree in to make sure all the lights work.”
So I plugged it in and had a Griswold moment. About three of the seven strands on the tree lit up. Are you shitting me? This damn tree is already covered in carefully placed ornaments and the stupid thing has lights that don’t work?
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I removed a couple ornaments to take a look at the electric situation I had going on. Let’s just say it resembled a fire hazard. There were about seven different strands of lights all plugged into each other haphazardly. Then there were a couple random plugs hanging around not plugged into anything. I decided that I would just shove the random plugs into the already fire hazard looking mess and call it a day. It worked! Kind of. Okay not really. That worked for one more strand of lights. I was up to four out of seven.
I decided it was time to call in backup. I yelled at my husband that was watching football in the living room that I needed help. He goes into the garage, comes back with some wire cutters and black tape, and goes to work. I left the room because it made me nervous. About fifteen minutes later I heard cussing. He walked into the playroom and said he waas giving up. The lights were a tangled mess and unless we removed them all from the tree and untangled them, we were screwed. On the bright side, he did get one strand to work. Five out of seven.
The agony of defeat. At this point, the Christmas tree had been in progress for about an hour and a half. There was no way in hell I was going to disassemble the entire thing to fix two strands of lights. So I said screw it. I put the rest of the ornaments up and put the star on top. As I got down from my chair, the star fell to the floor. Are you f*cking kidding me? I looked at my disastrous tree and actually cried. I know, I need to grow up. But the bottom left lights were out, the very top lights were out, the star I put on top was laying on the ground, and it just looked like a sad, sad excuse for a tree. Where was my cute adorable tree? I couldn’t take pictures in front of this monstrosity.
I sat down in the living room and made the mistake of getting on Facebook. Everyone had pictures of their adorable trees with ribbon and tulle and matching ornaments and stars that were on top that were sticking straight up. I cried a little more. My husband thinks i’m crazy. Sure, my tree looks okay when the lights are off, but what good is a tree that’s not lit?
I have been thinking about whether I am going to take the entire tree down, take all the lights off and restring them. I decided that is way too much work for a tree that will only be up for a month. So I am going to live the month of December with a jacked up tree in my dining room. I have bigger fish to fry. So if you happen to see my tree, don’t judge. I think it has personality. At least now that I have stopped crying about it.
Until Next Time,
Jamie
