O Little Town of Bethlehem

Because I'm procrastinating on cleaning my living room, dining room, and kitchen – the last of the house that needs to be cleaned before tomorrow's big first birthday bash – I thought I'd blog again.

Brendan has been super cute and super funny of late and because I haven't blogged in something like a week, I've missed out on sharing it all.

So, Wednesday night we decorated our tree. It was the best tree decorating occasion ever. For a variety of reasons.

Last year, in the throes of having a two-week old baby and freaking out over not having any decorations up, I conceded that perhaps an artificial tree would be tolerable. Scott ran out and bought a beautiful pre-lit tree at Michael's and on the 23rd of December, we decorated it.

This year, I wanted to take advantage of the fact that we had it and get it up early and enjoy the full season. I put it up last Saturday, but because we've been so busy, we didn't get around to the actual decorating until Wednesday. Brendan was so excited he put almost every decoration on by himself. Thus, there is a huge concentration of decorations on the bottom half, especially on one quarter of the tree, but it was just so cute that I didn't have the heart to move them out too much. I did move the breakable ones so they wouldn't be accessible to Beckett's curious fingers.

The entire time he was decorating, Brendan was singing and humming to himself and he kept saying over and over again, to no one in particular,

This is going to be the best Christmas ever!

When he was done decorating the tree, Brendan decided he wanted to play with my Nativity set or as he likes to call the Baby Jesus set.

He set took all the pieces from their box and set it up on the coffee table first, then moved it to the floor. He knew what all the pieces were and named them all as he set them up and he figured out that the angel hung over the creche. He deduced this because she had a little hook on her back and there was a tiny nail on the front of the creche. We were impressed.

He was playing with the nativity and telling us that Mary, Jophus, and Baby Jesus are his favorite characters in the Nativity story. Then, all of a sudden, very excitedly he said,

I hope this story has a happy ending!

Scott and I just looked at each other, trying not to laugh and then we both said,

Uh...Not so much. Nope, not really a happy ending for Jesus.

But when Brendan questioned us, we backtracked and said everything works out fine for jesus, Mary, and Joseph, which he accepted. We weren't really ready to get into the Easter story while celebrating Advent.