Parenting: The Half Christmas

December 13, 2011 (WPVI) -- When you have twin one-year-old boys Christmas becomes delightful and nightmarish all at once! Obviously you look for a fire-resistant artificial tree and you don't light candles with small children around. But there are hazards everywhere you turn!

There are so many decorations that my toddlers have already tried to dismantle and eat: stuffed snowmen with little button eyes, the fuzz on our stuffed Santa's beard, the tassels and bric-a-brac on the stockings.

I quickly made some commonsense decisions for their safety, my sanity and a stress-free holiday: Move the decorations out of reach. I certainly didn't want to spend the next month fussing at my little men, nor do I want to skip Christmas this year. So the compromise answer seems to be, put it in sight but out of reach.

Then came the dilemma of what to do about a tree. I could have just decided not to put one up this year. But I also have an 11-year-old who enjoys the holiday, and I don't want him to miss out.

So I came up with a novel solution: Put up a tree but only decorate it from the top down to the middle. That way there are no metal, glass or pointy decorations that the twins can reach and break, try to chew on, or step on. We left off the ornaments that are plastic but look like candy or cupcakes since the twins might try to shake the tree to get them to fall down and "eat" them.

We're calling it the Half-Christmas!

We'll certainly make up for the lack of low-level décor with our outsized Christmas spirit!

But I thought better safe than sorry, and I'm already glad.

In a way, tiny tots are no different than animals who must be protected from poisonous poinsettia leaves, small berries that look like candy but can hurt or kill, and of course tinsel, popcorn that they can choke on and more.

For additional tips, Reader's Digest has more ideas at rd.com/home/Christmas with more ideas.

And certainly I'm not putting any presents under the tree until after the twins go to sleep on Christmas Eve...or Zeke and Hunter will just rip the paper and bows off all of them and help themselves to everyone's gifts! I don't have time to re-wrap them...so they'll stay in a closet until the last minute.

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