Ho, Ho....Uh-Oh

AJ, in his spontaneous way, can sometimes unknowingly make things seem a bit better...

We decorated the house for Christmas today. Began with him helping me put up the tree...putting all the branches in the wrong places so it looked like a sculpted shrub until I got everything where it belonged. Then, I got lots of 'help' putting on the lights, which amounted to untangling the stuff I had already untangled but he was trying to put on the tree while I was putting on the other end. Finished that and repeated the process with his continued 'help' with the garland. Hoping to distract him, I brought in the 20 gallon plastic container of decorations. I immediately recognized this as a mistake as the tub was excitedly and promptly dumped upside down so he could look at everything that was in there all at once. While trying to decorate the tree, he decided he was hungry, so the decorating process was interrupted to make some pizza. While he was busy eating in front of a Christmas movie, I proceeded to decorate the tree as quickly as possible to avoid more 'help'. He announced that he needed more juice. In an effort to promote independence (and because I was still trying to untangle the garland he had assisted with), I asked him to get it himself. He happily dashed to the kitchen, pulled out the gallon pitcher of lime-aid and immediately dropped onto the floor. This catastrophe necessitated having to wash the sticky mess off the floor, including pulling out the refrigerator to get at the lime-aid that had made it's way under there. All the towels it took to mop up the mess made for yet another load of laundry. There was just enough juice left in the bottom of the pitcher to fill him a cup to drink. We went back to the living room to continue decorating. I kept working on the tree. He busily pushed every button on every singing, noise-making Christmas toy bombarding me with Santas, snowmen and a host of other winter characters belting out a variety of Christmas carols. Either he lost interest in that or all of the batteries in all of those toys died (I haven't checked yet...might not until New Year's). Suddenly it was quiet...for a few seconds. He turned on the Christmas piano, setting forth another barrage of Christmas melodies to which he made up his own words: "Christmas...Mom is nuts. Lights. Crazy mom. Decorations. Thank you, Mommy...Christmas tree. Happy. Merry Christmas. Thank you Mom."

Okay. I'm a sucker...I'll decorate with him again next year.