Tis’ the season for my 2 year old to break ornaments. Usually I leave this task for the cats to take care of.  They have managed to knock a Christmas tree completely on its side on several occasions shattering the most delicate of our festive decorations. Meanwhile , they scatter from the incident unharmed like that time in Fast Five when the dudes flew off a cliff with a car and both of them managed to not only escape from the car to jump into the water, but had no signs of injury. Tell me they aren’t superheroes.  One if them is Groot after all.

Nevertheless,  the tables have turned this year. When we started pulling ornaments from their box,  things were going well. When what should my wandering eyes should appear, but a thousand pieces of a Maker’s Mark ball ornament on the floor and my 2 year old thinking, “That ball didn’t even bounce. ” Break my ornaments once, shame on you.

Several minutes of clean-up ensued as I feverishly swept looking for microscopic bits of glass or frozen bourbon, whatever they used to fabricate the thing. Once collected in the dustpan, I briefly considered taking the shards of Maker’s Mark to Rivendell for the elves to reforge and realized I was in the Midwest, not Middle Earth.

Not so many days later, I arrived home to learn that my son had “probably” broken another ornament, a miniature version of those red and yellow coupe cars that kids can climb into and Flintstones themselves down driveways until they inevitably wreck. In my son’s defense, that ornament certainly looked like a toy car one might play with under normal circumstances.  But as we had already had a conversation about not touching the stuff on the tree, I insanely thought a 2 year old would need my instructions. Break my ornaments twice, shame on me.

They say, “third times a charm”.  Actually, the third time was an ornament once again.  One that we had only had in our possession for less than a week.  Twas the night before Friday and all through mine house, a creature was not really stirring so much as fiddling with something too delicate for a two year old to handle properly.  Thus when I arrived home, I learned the new Snoopy ornament had two pieces broken from it, Snoopy himself and Woodstock’s wing.   I call that animal cruelty.

But overall, it was nothing a few drops of super glue couldn’t fix.  See if you can spot the grammatical errors in this post, write them down and send them to Noe Juan at 100 Hoocares Lane, Nowhere, Alaska 90210.  This was the part of the story that got me raw.  Literally, when I glued Snoopy onto his doghouse and held him there for 30 seconds or whatever the directions said, I couldn’t get my thumb free.  I thought the Snoopy ornament might stay stuck to my thumb forever, greatly affecting the usefulness of my opposable appendage.  With the right amount of force, I pried myself loose and followed the other directions which mentioned using cooking oil to help with the glue residue on my skin.  It did not really work that well.  Luckily, with some Ninja-nuity I came up with a better strategy which includes the vigorous use of an emery board.  Although careful use of an orbital sander might also do the job.  I am not man enough to try it though.

As I finish this post, no further ornaments have been harmed.  Though I sincerely doubt that will remain true.  I am thinking about posting a sign in the living room that states, “5 days without a broken ornament.”  Scratch that.  “0 days without a broken ornament.”