The Christmas Truth

I love my kids. Really, I do. But fuck me dead if they didn’t almost kill the tree within 48 hours of it going up.

Witness the destruction.

Increasingly denuded tree – the work of a hungry dragon, apparently.

Completely denuded baubles – LD explained to me he was just playing with his balls. Oookay.

Within three days, they had defeated me. That night, B and I moved the damned tree.

The tree with almost no decorations from kid-reach down.

The tree that cost me a lazy 50 bucks just because it is real and smells good.

The tree that was dying before we ever strapped it to the roof of our car.

It does smell mighty good though.

So the tree is at the front door. Downstairs and safely away from the main living action which is located upstairs (stupid  topsy-turvy house). The expensive dead tree is downstairs and away from dragons and little boys who play with their balls – little boys who can but stand at the top of the staircase, hands clutching the safety gate that seeks to deny them, eyes gazing longingly at the splendid dead tree below.   

click image for larger view

The Christmas Lie

 

I often follow blogs because they’re just so gosh darn pretty. The photography is sublime and perfectly captures the beautiful happenings of the blogger’s life. And I am a BIG sucker for the pretty, the aesthetically pleasing. So those kinds of blogs get me right in the sweet spot.

And yes, in some small way, I aspire to that pretty life. Even though The Little Mumma has built itself on truth-telling, even though that is the number one reason people tell me they love this particular blog, I still yearn for the pretty. And scheme about the various pretty things I could blog about.

So I started taking photos when we went to get our Christmas tree this Saturday just gone. I thought there’d be lots of opportunity to get some really great shots of the family choosing our first real pine tree together. And actually, I did get some really cute shots. And then once again, when we decorated the tree.

A picture is worth a thousand words. This we know to be true. But did anyone ever bother to question whether any of those thousand words were even remotely true? Because I can tell you unequivocally that the photos you see above are out and out LYING. It looks like a family, four adorables, laughing and revelling in the holiday cheer. But really, if it had a soundtrack, it might begin to paint a very different picture.

“No, LD, you may not take the photos. Because the camera is very expensive and you’re only three years old, that’s why! Don’t you dare hit the camera with that dinosaur. Don’t make me send you to time out! B, Zee is eating the tinsel! Stop Zee from eating the tinsel, B! LD, don’t wrap the tinsel around my neck. LD! I sa -aaccchhhhh, aaaccchhhh! Right, that’s it, time out! Time out for choking your mother! No Zee, we just put those baubles up, stop taking them down. No, Zee! No! No, don’t chew the electrical cord. B, unplug the lights! Quick, unplug them, Zee is chewing the cord. LD, they’re called Christmas carols and we’re going to listen to them and ENJOY it. I said ENJOY IT, damn it!” 

Betty, my mum, called me today. She asked me how the tree decorating had gone. I told her it had been a hellish nightmare and that we’d quit half way through and only once the kids were safely tucked away in bed did we attempt to finish it. She laughed and said something along the lines of “Kids ruin everything. They’re bullshit.” That’s my interpretation of it, in any case. And yes, many things I’ve so very much looked forward to doing with my kids and introducing them to for the first time have invariably descended into a whingeing, crying fiasco. With a couple of misleading photos to mark the occasion.

So, I think next time I’m looking at one of my favourite pretty blogs, I’m going to remind myself of what they’re not saying. Because the pretty blog, the blog as art, has an important place. I definitely want to keep reading them. As long as I don’t start beating myself up for not being them….