Our family has always enjoyed decorating the Christmas tree. When I was a kid, we did it annually on the Saturday closest to December 15th. (Having a wood stove shortens the amount of time a tree does well...). It was such a fun day. Cocoa to drink. Christmas music playing. Telling stories about various ornaments.
Other than the date, my husband and I have carried this tradition onto our own family. We opted to go with an artificial tree because of the layout of our house (think tree right across from wood stove scenario...) and we always had it up the majority of December.
Until this year.
Owen's Pica has gotten so bad that we were worried to put it up. Too tempting for him. Too much headache for the rest of us. We didn't want to constantly be loosing ornaments to Owen's GI tract. Not to mention the pain that those ornaments could cause Owen.
Spending all day, every day, keeping a very strong and very determined seven year old away from a beautiful tree doesn't sound like a way to enjoy the Christmas season to me. Neither did having it barricaded with the dining room table or something. So Bryan suggested not having a tree this year.
It made sense.
But, something has been missing. The younger kids keep asking when we'll put up the tree. They worked hard on ornaments last year (with Truth in the Tinsel) and wanted to see their work. They love the sight of a decorated tree.
We had to do something. So, how did we decorate for Christmas this year?
We took advantage of the ceilings. My husband had that wonderful idea! We hung garland up around the dining room/living room and used ornament hooks to hang our lighter ornaments from it.
When we go shopping this coming Friday, we are going to buy some heavy duty hooks for the ceiling that will support the weight of our other ornaments. We are planing on stretching string around the room with those hooks.
The best part? The string can stay up year round. We can finally easily decorate for other holidays without worrying about anything being eaten. Snowflakes in January. Hearts in February. You get the idea! We're so excited.
And Owen can't reach them. He can just sit back and look at them like the rest of us. Yeah! It's safe.
Now we don't miss the tree as much. Not when we can look up and see the beautiful decorations all around the room.
It works for us!
And hopefully when we go to the doctor at the end of the month, he'll have a suggestion on the worsening Pica.
Linked up to: Raising Arrows
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