On Saturday, by some miracle, we were able to "trim the tree." By trimming, I mean putting up a plastic tree with plastic and wooden decorations (note no glass ornaments, I’m not taking that chance with my little monkeys). No actual trees were trimmed in our household. As a matter of fact, no actual vegetation surrounding our home has been trimmed in a long while as well, but that is another column altogether.

Our reasons for not having a real tree are laziness, concern over allergies, and laziness.

My husband and I reluctantly went ahead with the daunting task of assembling the Christmas tree on Saturday afternoon, as we promised our four-year-old we would. If it were just he and I we would probably be satisfied with a paper cut-out tree with drawn on ornaments, but our preschooler would have none of that. She requires a big tree, with lots of lights.

The problem with getting the Christmas tree up in our home is lack of space. There is just no room for a tree. We had to move furniture. We moved the couch that was in the dining room into the laundry room so we could move the loveseat that is in the living room into the dining room so we could put the tree up in the living room. Putting up the tree involved cleaning out 12 months of toys, dust, dirt, dead pill bugs (where did they all come from??) and other scary objects from behind these couches and cleaning a space in the laundry room large enough to set a small couch in it.

It was a lot of work.

We set our toddler in his crib watching a video so we could go about our work without his interference, while our four-year-old helped us sort out the branches by color. My husband repeatedly announced it was break time, and tried in vain to enjoy a beverage while listening to Christmas music and our four-year-old nagging, "Come on Dad! Let’s put up the Christmas tree!"

Unfortunately, after all this, my husband was much too tired to put on the lights properly, even though he is the resident lighting expert, so I was forced to intervene and put them on in some kind of uniform manner. Then the beaded garland went on. Our daughter started hanging little toy drums, snowmen, tiny stockings, and other baubles. I put some ornaments on the top, so we wouldn’t have a tree decorated only on the bottom first three feet.

Amazingly, when we sat down to admire our work, it actually looked – good. The rest of our house is a ridiculous array of toys, clothes, and preschool artwork, but that portion of the living room with the Christmas tree was a sight to behold.

Until little brother was let out of his crib, anyhow.

The two of them make a great team. The toddler loves to pull stuff off, and his big sister loves to hang it back on.

With a little luck the tree will remain upright for the entire season, but I’m not holding my breath.

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