It Tolls for E

Yesterday I was trying to calm Elliot, employing my strategy of last resort, which is the Christmas Tree.    He is fascinated by the tiny lights, and the reflections they make in the shiny ornaments next to them.  (Thinking about it makes me want to go look at the tree myself).

One of my family's traditions is that each son has a silver bell, which he (and only he) is allowed to place on the tree.  This year Hannah's parents, in a lovely act of family solidarity, got Elliot a silver bell of his own.

He's too young to hang it himself, or even know what a bell is.  But he does like to watch shiny objects, a trait he shares with his father, small rodents, and every media corporation in the world.

The next step after looking at the bell is whacking it.  I've been trying to encourage this.  I figure it's a good education for him: he learns that bells make noise only when they move, so it's like a mini-physics lesson.  While also being fun!

So there I am, holding him in front of the bell, and his little arm is moving around trying to whack it.  But as anyone who's ever trimmed a tree knows, when you put a heavy ornament on a thin fir branch it often droops so low that it rests on the branch below it.  Which means that the bell can't move when Elliot whacks it.  Which means no fun sounds.

So what do I do?  I TAKE THE BRANCH IN MY MOUTH.  At the moment, this seems like an completely logical thing to do.  I bite on the branch and raise it, thus lifting the bell free so that Elliot can whack it.

Go for it little guy!  Whack away!  Learn about how bells work!  These encouragements came out pretty garbled since I had a tree branch in my mouth.  But his little arm did seem to spasm back and forth more vigorously.

I'm not going to sugar coat the ending of this story.  I stayed like that for the better part of a minute.  It really seemed like he was trying to hit the bell.  Eventually I twisted my neck sideways so that I could, while still holding the tree branch in my mouth, look at his face.

He was watching the TV.