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Even though it’s been a couple of years since I’ve made the effort, I’m giving holidailies a good stab this year.  It is currently before midnight on December 1, so thus far, I’m doing perfectly!

Remember the Bert and Ernie skit:

“I ONE the sandbox.”

“I TWO the sandbox”

…

Today we spent the afternoon at a tree trimming party.  I’d never been to such a thing, and I actually can’t claim to have been there for the trimming, because I was teaching a class during that part of the fun, but from what Jim is telling me, it was huge amounts of fun!  Decorating the tree in my house was always kind of a chore.  In fact, I remember my grandmother doing it all for us when we weren’t home.  Inviting your friends over to decorate and celebrate with snacks and nogg seemed like the best idea ever!

Until my kid ate an ornament.

See, we were all sitting around, chit-chatting, and the kids were running around, playing with different playthings around the house, when Jonah decided that pulling ornaments off the tree was the fun thing to do for that moment.  So I stood there and passed ornaments that he handed me back onto the tree.  He would pull them off, I’d take them and re-hang, lather, rinse, repeat.  Finally he started to walk away from the tree, and I, in all my naieve-ness, figured that he was done with the tree.  That he was no longer interested in taking the ornaments off and putting them off.  That the one ornament that he still had in his hands was going to be something that he would put down in a few seconds, after he saw that I wasn’t trying to pry it from his hands.  Because you know, if mom doesn’t care to fight him about it, it no longer holds any sort of charm.

But I was wrong.  Instead of putting it down and walking off to find some other Really Cool Toy, he stuck it in his mouth.  And bit down.  I know what you’re thinking - how did your kid get his jaws around one of those balls?  They’re kind of big…  Didja know they come in sizes?  This was the baby-jaw sized one.

Fortunately, God blesses us with the natural instinct to stop chewing when we know that we’ve bit into something that just doesn’t feel right.  And then there’s that thing that told him not to swallow as soon as he felt the glass cut into his gums…  I think the worst part was the glass in the gums and Jim and I stuffing our fingers down his mouth trying to get every last shard of glass out of there.  And that sinking feeling of the “bad mommy moment,” when I realized that the whole thing could have been prevented, had I snagged the ball out of his hands BEFORE he chomped down on it.  And that other sinking feeling I had when I thought about how my best mommy and daddy friends were there, watching me fail at children’s safety 101.  I could hear their disapproving thoughts in my head, “see, THAT’S why we watch our kid…)  Of course that’s paranoia talking, and these friends of ours are far to classy to be all judgy-judge like that.

He’s fine.  We’re fine.  The Christmas tree still looks good, despite the missing ball.  And I’ve learned something fascinating:  If ever you need to look inside your kid’s mouth, flip him upside down.  It’s ten times easier than making funny open-mouthed faces at him and trying to get him to mimic.