How to Traumatize 2 Year Olds: A Do It Yourself Guide

So, as parents we typically spend a lot of time preparing children for things.  Whenever I go anywhere with Hannah I like to explain where we are going and why.  I do this mainly because I realize that she is this little person that just get picked up and put in the car seat, probably wondering what is going to happen next.  We talked about Christmas for a long time before Santa actually came.  We talked about the tree and the ornaments (which were breakable and which were unbreakable,) decorations inside and outside the house, presents, Baby Jesus, giving, sharing, all of those Christmasy things.  What I neglected to emphasize was the fact that this was a temporary holiday.  That soon everything would have to come down and be stored away until next year.  Instead, Paul and I just began in our serious, focused on a task, kind of way.  Hannah was cool with the ornaments coming down.  I think she just thought, OK, so sometimes they go up and sometimes they come down.  It also afforded her a better and closer look at some that she had only seen from afar.  Then the lights came down, and that was o.k. too, because she was able to help gather them up and put them in bags.  But then came the saw.  Her Daddy turned the noisy thing on and began hacking away at our poor tree and Hannah just lost it.  She was frantic and trying to scream above the noise of the saw to find out why Daddy hated our tree so much!  Paul turned off the saw and we talked about the fact that Christmastime is over and that soon many, many baby bunnies would be born and would need a place to sleep with their mommies, so Daddy was chopping down our tree to take out to the woods so that the bunnies can make a house in its branches.  That seemed to do the trick, but several times this evening she asked about the well-being of Bob (He comes down tomorrow!)