The Mosenthins: Oh Christmas Tree (and happy tears

Our Christmas decorating is happening in stages this year it seems. We first put up Kaelyn's little tree in her bedroom. The weekend before Thanksgiving, we put up the tree and Kevin did the outside decorations but we didn't get the tree decorated till this past weekend. Decorating the tree was thrilling for us this year. Kevin and I LOVE Christmas but Christmas hasn't been as big a deal to Kaelyn as it is to most kids her age. Because so often she is in her own world and she doesn't really know or understand what it's about (or what all it includes), there are only small moments that have excited her in the past. And actually, a lot of elements of the season have been somewhat stressful for her. Because of her being autistic, she is bothered by a lot of the things that are not part of our normal life and routine. She is not crazy about things getting moved around and changed for the sake of decorating. She has been very frustrated with gift unwrapping in the past because she can't understand why once she opens one item she likes, why she has to sit and open more and she loses interest in it. Besides, honestly, she tends to "go back to" her few favorite things that she plays with 90% of the time anyway. It's not that we WANT her to want lots of stuff and be ungrateful for one present but the season is always a bit more stressful - even our Christmas travels - because of the way she operates. We bought a special ornament for her last year to unwrap and put on the tree when we decorated. She loved the concept of it "dangling" since that is one of her big stimulation things (anything that she can dangle) but we couldn't get her to put it on the tree for anything so it became a toy for her. In the past couple years, we've got her to hang one or two ornaments at least enough to try to get pictures of "the family decorating the tree" but in all reality she hasn't really gotten the concept or cared that much. In all fairness, I know she's still young but because she functions somewhat differently than others, I wasn't sure she would ever be interested in Christmas. Thus the happy tears this year when something clicked with her and she "got it". When we put up her little tree, she was happy to be involved but she still didn't really care that much beyond the first 3 minutes. However,it made her remember her favorite Christmas story from last year - "Alabaster" which we have in a book and on a movie. In the story, the angel on the top of the tree is the main character and he tells the little boy in the story all about the first Christmas and he sings with the angels that sang to the shepherds. She went and found the book in the back room on the bookshelf where I put all our Christmas stories after Christmas. From hearing the book and watching the movie, something clicked and she started begging us to "put Alabaster on the tree" even though we didn't have the tree up. She was so thrilled the night we put the tree up and she helped put our angel on top. I went into her room one evening and was amused and shocked. She has an Easter egg of bunnies (just like the barrel o' monkies only the loops are rabbits ears on rabits instead of monkey's arms). We don't know if she got them out and something clicked or if she thought about them and realized they would hang but she had dug them out of her toy basket and gotten her step stool and she hung several of them by the loops on her little tree. That was kind of our first sign that she kind of understood about hanging things on Christmas trees. They remain there as she won't let us touch them. :) Then we went to decorate the big tree last weekend and of course we showed her what to do etc. And she caught on and LOVED it! We had to put the hooks on for her because she still really struggles with fine motor skills. First she put all the ornaments right beside each other but we showed her out to spread them out. Instead of stopping after the first ornament, she ran back and forth excitedly from the tree to the boxes of ornaments and seemed totally fascinated with all the ornaments even though of course, most of them we've had in the past. She stuck with it mostly all the way to the end and seemed to love every minute of it. And she was running around clapping and excited. She sensed that the whole Christmas thing is something exciting though she doesn't know everything that it includes. Then this morning when we were on the way to school, she asked for the "Christmas song" which is just Christmas music in general instead of one of the two CDs that we listen to EVERY time we are in the car. So all the pictures and excitement over her decorating the trees might seem strange to all of you but you just have to understand where we're coming from - every little change like that or thing she catches on to is big for us and we feel blessed. I had already determined to not feel distressed this year if she just wanted to dangle the ornaments in front of her face or if she didn't show any interest. It seems like every time I come to a place where I can just let [my expectations] go, then she surprises us and we get a pleasant surprise. So that's our Christmas decorating story thus far - now I've got to get the rest of the house done. :)