O Christmas tree

The second year of our marriage, Rachel and I got an artificial tree at Lowes, and Rachel has hated it more every year, mostly because it takes at least an hour to set up under the best of conditions, and two with "help."

This is the year that her hate for that collection of plastic finally overcame my reluctance to kill a live tree to have it shed the living hell out of our living room for a few weeks. It's every bit as bad as I feared, but Rachel likes the smell and keeps saying things like "What a pretty tree!" so this might be my fate for the foreseeable future.

(I think part of my immunity to the tree's charms might be that my memories of pine scent skew heavily towards trying to scrub pine sap off my skin as a boy -- much harder than you'd think -- rather than nutmeg and apple pie. The only trees we had with branches I could reach were pine.)

Melissa is thrilled, I think partly because she believes that buying and decorating the tree brings Christmas that much closer -- she keeps asking "is Christmas tomorrow?" -- but mostly because she adores pretty things. She was so anxious to get the tree that she offered to pay for it: "I saved lots of dollars!" I reassured her that buying the tree was Daddy's job, but she was still excited to help, and ultimately I accepted a single penny from her purse.

My cousin's wife Jen warned us to "keep it filled with TONS of water or it just [sheds] incredibly worse," and so far Melissa has been eager to claim that duty. She was dressed for church before the rest of us this morning, so I handed her a beaker with strict instructions to only fill it halfway full from the sink before taking it to the tree. The next time I came downstairs, Melissa met me with a hangdog expression. "Daddy? I had an accident." With Melissa lately, "having an accident" usually involves needing a change of underwear, so I was wary: "What kind of accident?" "I spilled. I spilled the whole thing in the bathroom!" So I told her to get a towel and wipe it up, and she scampered off, relieved again.

Now we are decorating it while Isaac naps. Rachel and I hung the lights ("Your dad didn't set much of an example for you here, did he?" "No. His contribution was primarily to bring the tree down from the attic") while the older kids broke ornaments in their excitement. The score is currently 1:1. Now Rachel is hanging the beads.

Update: now (a day later) the score is 1:2:2. Isaac and Melissa have each broken two.