The Toddler Trio Tree Adventures, continued!

The tree has now been up since Thanksgiving night. Ever since then, it has stood in the corner, leaning in its cracked little stand, awaiting the arrival of its shiny new stand.

Friday evening, that new stand arrived. Thankfully, it is the same stand, just a little bit beefier which should make it much more sturdy than its predecessor.

That night, Husband, Bregon and I made THE SWITCH. I assembled the new stand and Husband picked up the tree while Bregon removed the old stand and slid the new one into place.

It was done. The tree now stood straight and tall in its new stand, firmly planted on top of the antique steamer trunk in the far corner of our living room.

All we had to do now, was decorate it. It was really too late to get everything out by the time everything was together on Friday night, so we decided to wait.

The babies didn't realize anything was different, and they treated it the same way they did each and every day.

Kaiden and Kian each gave it the requisite good morning hug and Vivienne stood her ground in the center of the living room and shouted her usual greeting in triplet-ese.

We ended up waiting until Sunday night to decorate that tree. As soon as the babies were in bed and squared away for the night, I began to unpack the cedar chest where the decorations are all kept.

I carefully unloaded the three bins of ornaments and the many little ornament boxes that contain Bregon's Star Wars ornament collection.

I never realized just how many Star Wars ornaments we really do have. I appear to have everything but the Death Star on my tree (and really we do have one in the form of a Darth Vader snow-globe that lives on Bregon's desk upstairs!)

Husband made us a fire in our fireplace as we sorted through and untangled everything from the boxes.

While Bregon unpacked his Star Wars stuff, I managed to amass the ingredients for S'mores and the coat hangers to cook them with.

In between hanging ornaments, we all made S'mores and watched one of our favorite Christmas movies, "Mixed Nuts."

Once we were finished with the tree, I wrapped its skirt around the base and we all stood back to admire it.

There was one last little touch. We had never tried this before, but because the babies are free-roaming toddling terrors, we had all agreed that we needed to put the play-yard around the tree in some effort to avoid disaster.

The play-yard just fit around everything enough to allow the tree to still spin without catching on the gate and hopefully left enough room in the front to keep the babies out of the tree. Only time would tell for certain!

As an extra added precaution, I zip-tied the gate to the leg of the piano in hopes of keeping the babies from being able to move the play-yard around enough to allow them to reach the tree itself.

The Day of Reckoning

Morning came all too soon for me. I made a quick run through the living room to check to ensure that everything was in its place and ready for my tiny trio to play.

I ran upstairs to get them all while the blueberry waffles cooked in the toaster oven.

I very trustingly sat Kian and Kai down just inside the hallway gate, fastened it into place, and ran back up to get Vivienne.

When I came back downstairs, I found both boys standing at the play-yard gate with their little arms outstretched as far as they could reach, trying to touch their tree.

There would be no good morning tree-hug this morning, unfortunately.

I managed to get them all changed and into their seats with little trouble.

It was after breakfast that the storm broke! Kai ran to the tree as soon as I let him out of his feeding chair. Kian was not too far behind.

Apparently, they had been plotting and planning in triplet-ese over breakfast as to how best to get to the tree.

Lucky for me, Kaiden has quite forgotten how to climb the play-yard gate itself (a feat that had earned him the nickname "Spiderman.")

Unfortunately, both boys remembered the gate being very pliable, and they had devised a plan to work together to get it reshaped to their advantage.

Kai was able to just barely reach the frog prince ornament. After Kian had pushed as far as he could on that gate, Kaiden realized that he just was not going to be able to play with that froggie and he began to cry.

Kaiden became sadder and sadder as his efforts to get to the toys hanging on that tree failed.

Kian was able to finally reach a SpongeBob ornament, but I quickly intervened and rehung it a bit hirer, much to the boy's chagrin.

By this point, Vivienne was standing in her usual center spot giving what appeared to be pointers to her brothers on how to accomplish the plan.

Kaiden had taken a new approach and was laying on the floor with both feet pressed against that play-yard gate, putting all his little weight into it in an effort to budge the fence.

It just was NOT working out for him and it made him very very sad.

This went on for about an hour for the three of them. Once the clock chimed ten, I knew it was time to take them upstairs for a nap.

The tree had survived its first morning decorated. I had only one casualty where Kai had managed to separate the ornament from the string attached to it.

The babies now had a new mantra, "Look, but don't touch!" They were NOT pleased with this, but were more than happy to get to have a nap, though!

After nap time, they seemed to be more acclimated to the idea that the gate was going to protect their tree at all costs.

Kaiden did stand at the gate and gaze sadly at the out of reach tree, but he didn't scream or cry this time.

Everyone appeared to be in agreement that the tree was off limits, and that playing with their actual toys was a much better way to spend their afternoon.

For the moment, the tree appears to be safe...for a time!