Mysterious Disappearing Tree Ornaments

Notice the empty spots on the front of the tree?  Okay, not so mysterious. One guess who is taking them?

I learned my lesson about 4 years ago when Munchkin thought the beautiful ornaments were balls. Needless to say the ornament I bought the first year my husband and I started dating did not survive. Mr L tried to piece it back together for me, but it was beyond saving. He did manage to save the other ornament that a friend had given me. A lot of patience, crazy glue, and probably some cursing was involved.

This year I took no chances.  While Munchkin has no interest in removing ornaments from the tree, Pumpkin seems to have inherited some "hoarding" tendencies?  I keep finding him with six or seven ornaments clutched in his little hands.  After a while he figured out he could hold onto more if he strung them on his fingers.  I made sure  My lovely sister-in-law made sure that only the unbreakable ones were within Pumpkin's reach and all of my special glass or breakables were at the top of the tree.

I actually don't mind because he is counting them and sorting them by color-  I'll take this as an educational opportunity.  Or maybe I'm just too tired (lazy) to try and keep him from pulling them down.    Not to worry, I did make sure that the tree was securely anchored to the wall!  Despite the fact that there are "bare" spots on the tree, I actually prefer this to gating the tree off.  I did that one year and I thought it kind of took away from that Christmas-y feeling.

By the way, please excuse our crooked tree topper.  I kind of just tossed it up there and told myself I would get a step stool and fix it right away.  A week later...yeah it might still be crooked at Christmas!  But doesn't that make it  all the more special  ;)