mrs. santa's workshop

Sorry that I haven't been posting a lot lately but the holidays are fast approaching and my time is getting consumed with all the preparations - the decorating, the shopping, the gift wrapping and all the outings and parties. Eddie has been my little elf, helping me out in the workshop with wrapping the gifts and decorating the tree. I hand him luxurious ribbons (made by my talented mother) and he just fingers them and stares. It's funny how he seems to understand that the ribbons shouldn't be sucked on, especially because everything else ends up in his mouth these days. We bought our Christmas tree on Saturday. We contemplated driving out to a farm to cut it down a la Griswalds, but when we thought through it all (a 4 hour drive, the cold weather and the act of cutting it down), we decided to postpone it for future years when Eddie could enjoy...and remember it.

The Christmas tree is a big deal in my family - for those who have been to the Lauer house over the holidays you know what I mean. My mother owns thousands of ornaments, probably enough to fill ten 10 ft. trees. And many of the ornaments have special stories and meanings associated with them. When we were younger we always put two trees up - the big tree and a kiddie tree. My sister and I would decorate the kiddie tree that sat in our dining room, while our mother did the tree in the living room. She meticulously arranged the white lights and ornaments over the course of days...yes days...it was a process. This year, since my sister and I are both homeowners, we decided that it was finally time to decorate our own trees. And so over Thanksgiving weekend we went through all the ornaments with our mother to decide which ones, out of the thousands, to take and have within our own homes. Now I too am in the process of decorating the tree, just as painstakingly and control-freakish as my Mom. The process started Saturday afternoon and I probably won't be finished until Tuesday, especially since I have to take baby breaks. I know my son will probably never "get into" decorating the tree or wrapping gifts with pretty ribbons. He probably will prefer sledding and throwing snowballs. So for now I can relish in these moments of infancy when he can be an innocent observer and listener. I tell him stories about all the ornaments - the closepin nativity set my cousin Chrissy made, the hula dancer from Anna Duchelle's trip to Hawaii, the vintage ornaments that hung on his great grandparents' Carl and Josephine's tree and the Christopher Radko's that were coveted by my Mother.