My son, however, knows exactly what time of year it is. While I tend to have grown up worries about things like the pipes under the house, the tree that needs to be taken down, the shifts in the foundation from Texas weather fluctuations, he is conscious only of how long we let him stay in the pool, or how wet he can get us if he manages to get ahold of the hose.

As a parent, I fall into the trap of hovering and being too restrictive. Underneath that is simply the desire to protect my son from mishaps that can unwittingly cause harm (or cost a lot of money). Despite those intentions, a major early lesson staring me in the face is the need to let go, and let out the leash. It’s more difficult than it sounds, I’ve discovered it takes practice on a conscious level. The payoff is the expression on his face when he discovers something wonderful or experiences something new.

Though I’m sure every parent has had well-meaning rules they’ve enacted for themselves related to their parenting style (that probably last about as long as “I won’t become my parents”), I’m resolving now that if I succeed at nothing else, I would hope I just don’t grow him up too quickly.

Time has a habit of running together during the madcap adventures of a munchkin growing up from age zero, I could have sworn I was thirty four last year. Regardless, I managed to squeak by the Grim Reaper long enough to reach this new and somewhat anticlimactic milestone. I’m constantly surprised I made it past twenty with all the shenanigans I pulled as a youth.

In sharp contrast to my violently unstable teens and twenties, life today is mostly white-picket-fence and HGTV. And it sure as hell better be, we are shaping the life and future of a little one, so anything but stability is entirely selfish. At some point right around thirty, the proverbial fork appeared in the road. Either I was going to continue to hold onto the dream and act like I was twenty two, recklessly pursuing fast music and even faster cars, or I was going to grow up and go the age-appropriate route, calming down enough to start a family and mold a happy, healthy home.

I obviously took the path that has speed-bumped around to finally arrive at a stable home life, and I’ve not had a single regret. I’m frequently asked whether I’m enjoying family life, and I have to fight off the dry heaves as I actually find myself standing on the brink of using words like “fulfilling” or saying “I’ve found my greater purpose”.

To celebrate my birthday, E treated me to a trip out to Fort Worth to see the Zoo’s Museum of Living Art, their newly constructed reptile and amphibian house. What started out as an excursion allowing me to take some photographs of the animals happily turned into a chance to watch L see all the wildlife for the first time.

By the time we ran around the Zoo a few times trying to escape the unmistakable stench of elephant poop, L was wiped out and went narcoleptic on the car ride home. Italian food and films capped off the day’s indulgences, and we all slept soundly that night to the sound of a thunderstorm. I couldn’t have asked for a better birthday.

Liam is now eighteen months old, and trying to either disassemble or climb on everything he sees. I keep my camera ready, looking for those rare quiet moments.

In April our friends planned an Easter egg hunt for the kiddos. After looking upon individual eggs with wonder, and giving all his eggs to mommy to make sure she had enough, he wound up with very few himself.

Though he inherited my horrible allergies, his newfound love du jour seems to be slobbery dog kisses. We finally brought in the big guns and let the lawn service conquer the backyard jungle, so it’s quite the little place to run around now. The pup pups are enamored with him, and tolerate even the most awkward of ear tugs and tail pulls.

L’s other newfound love is the telephone. Every ring elicits a loudly yelled “MAMA!!”, no doubt having had the phone associated with E’s evening calls to home during late work nights. Though we continually position the phone out of reach, he continually finds chairs to push over to the high table and scoots himself up to fiddle with the buttons and call people from the saved phone number directory. At one point we caught him having successfully started dialing “011 44″ followed by not much of anything on his part as we quickly snatched the phone away.

But no matter what destruction befalls our home by his hand, every night when he sleeps our twenty four hour amnesia kicks in, and to us he reverts back to being just our pure, angelic little munchkin.

Though my idea of a walk is the standard cinematic father and son mosey down the sidewalk with some rock kicking and the occasional stumble, L is more inclined to tear ass down the street as soon as his feet leave the lawn and hit pavement. Half the time the walk is more of a chase, and what appears to be a comforting hug on film is more a grab and lift in the case of approaching traffic.

E got me over my phobia of being too far from the front door by going and actually locking it, so I agreed to roll down to the park for some swings and slides. We hit the mulch and L nearly forgot he had parents.

At first we thought the swings would be innocent enough, but after placing L in the swing in the correct direction he somehow found a way to make it weird and uncomfortable. He refused to sit up, and just drooped his limbs down like dead weight and leaned his head over the edge pointing everything straight down like a dead sack of potatoes.

Finally we turned him around in the swing so he was sitting backwards, the higher back portion of the swing under his armpits. He straightened up a bit and gave us some high fives.

As soon as we freed him of the swing’s shackles, he made a beeline for the slides. He was able to climb most of the stairs himself (under supervision), and took to the smaller slide like a fish in water.

Just as suddenly as he lit up at the idea of the park, he was done. He gave us the big adios, and tried to tear ass across the park to wherever it was he thought he was going.

Just out of frame, of course, is E giving chase.

Having been let out from work early to get home safely, I picked up L from daycare and went home to the warm house. We played in the living room for most of the afternoon, but I couldn’t resist bundling him up for a few minutes outside in what was then roughly six to seven inches of snow.

He stomped around with big stomps for a few minutes, made it all the way down to the sidewalk and back onto the front lawn, before the fun ended and he started getting cold and uncomfortable.

He at least managed to avoid the yellow snow left against the base of our trees by the neighborhood dogs, for which I am quite thankful.

Christmas Eve brought not only a whopping Texas blizzard sized half inch of snow, but also nausea and lots of vomiting for one and all. Apparently L had picked up a stomach bug when he went to the doctor for his bilateral ear infections, and gave us the ultimate Christmas present. The only one who wasn’t sick was E, we’re presuming that’s because her stomach is made of hate, and not even bacteria can live in such an environment.

One of the more fantastic things about a tree with sharp needles is that it has built-in baby deterrents. Anytime L put his hand on any of the branches, he’d automatically yank it back and walk away in disgust. Finally he realized he could at least steal a candy cane off one of the lower branches, and figured the best way to eat it was with the plastic on. That got deep-sixed with the quickness.

We finished decorating the tree and wrapping all the presents at two in the morning, as is customary last-minute fashion for our family. E suggested I snap a photo of the tree with everything laid out and peaceful, before the morning comes and L declares war on anything wrapped.

Morning finally came, and in between vomits L cautiously crept his way through the stack of presents not really knowing what to make of any of it. We helped him unwrap a few, and he again trotted around flailing his arms and throwing the wrapping paper into big piles.

He finally calmed down enough to brave the big red doggie, and giggled as we hopped the blue one around while making barking noises.

Whether or not he fully appreciated all that was Christmas, we still had a lot of fun watching him and listening to his squeals and cackles of laughter.

She dolled up L in his proper little dress shirt and bow tie, and let him run around the bedroom while she got ready to bring him down to Santa’s Workshop.

Unfortunately, L didn’t realize that when he continues to pull the caps off the toilet screws in the bathroom, each “NO” will get progressively louder, and will be eventually followed by a smack on the hand. He crumpled into a little pile on the bathroom floor to show how horrible and dreadful it was to be reprimanded.

I did not go down to see Santa with them, so unfortunately all I received are two pieces of information secondhand: Everyone loved L and his bowtie, and L hated, hated, hated Santa.

After walking around and taking in that fantastic tree smell for awhile, we took a walk through their tacky “Spray-Snow Winter Wonderland” room just for giggles.

We always have a a huge crisis of conscience when buying a real tree in Texas. Being New Yorkers, our dead parents would spin in their graves if they knew we spent more than $50 on a tree. So we walked past the $300 six foot trees up front, and asked for their Charlie Brown section. We’ve had luck doing that previously, I’m always surprised what constitutes a “reject” tree in some people’s minds.

As we turned the corner to Budget Row, we were greeted by some of the tallest, most full and beautiful trees on the lot, for a fraction of the price of the others. We asked the lot guy what could possibly be wrong with these and he said, “A lot of people don’t like them because the needles are stiff.” Anyone who has hung an ornament on a Christmas tree knows that stiffer needles keep the hooks on better, so we laughed and shelled out a comparatively miniscule amount of money. The total price wound up being 35% of what we paid for the fake the week before.

When we got home and got the tree in the house, I grabbed the Sawzall and lopped off a few of the bottom branches to give me enough trunk to get it into the base.

Though we can’t know for certain what L thinks about the tree until he starts talking, we’d like to think that the smile on his face last night meant that he knew this tree was super fantastic and the other one sucked big ass balls. After he touched it a few times and stared at it, we’re certain the “stiff needles” will probably be one deterrent to him mucking with the tree.

Then, as quickly as the day passed, it was suddenly time for bed.

After combing through websites and sale circulars, I found that Garden Ridge was having a 50% reduction in price on all their artificial trees, including their unlit models. We decided to go with an unlit tree simply due to the amount of lights we already have in the attic, we figured we could save a bit of money foregoing the prelit option.

It being a particularly quiet Sunday evening at our local neighborhood Garden Ridge, we turned L loose from the shopping cart and photographed some of the mayhem.

After having our newly purchased “reality challenged” Christmas tree sit in its box in our front room for nearly a week, I decided to clear some space and assemble the thing. I got out the base and unfurled the bottom layer.

I thought I was imagining things, but to me the bottom layer looked like complete shit. I decided to give it the benefit of the doubt, and assemble the rest of the tree.

I slid each layer into the top of the previous one, and by the time I popped the top crown into the second-highest layer, I had a 7 1/2 foot tall towering piece of garbage. I tried again to think that maybe I was just misjudging the thing. It was obvious that each branch piece consisted of a bunch of wired twig pieces that needed to be spread way out to fill in all the blank space. L by then had long been asleep so, going against my desire to throw it off the front porch, I took a small nap before he woke up.

As L and I woke up, E arrived home. She strolled through the front door, looked up and said, “What the fuck? Please tell me our Christmas tree doesn’t look like that.”

I gave her the bad news and then, to check whether I was crazy, asked her what she thought about the whole “spreading out the twig pieces” deal. She agreed it was obvious that needed to be done. But the more we looked at this poor bastard tree, the more we realized there was just not enough spreading out that could be done to even remotely make Olive Oyl here look like something resembling a standard Christmas pine.

After letting Liam walk around this horrible piece of shit and completely ruining the first glimpse he’ll have in his life of what a Christmas tree looks like, we packed it back up in the box and found the receipt. I hope he’s not yet old enough to form a solid memory of what we did to his tree, I felt like a zookeeper who removed a baby squirrel from its mother and instead let it imprint on a pelican.

Needless to say we’ll be exploring other options.