Countdown to Christmas

A friend gave us this advent calendar quite a few years ago. It’s super cute, but the little socks are just that: little. One year, I resolved to give Bub something cute each day, but the biggest thing that can be inserted into the socks must be about the diameter of a Wh0pper. It’s hard to find gifts that skinny. Then, in a year where she was particularly down, I found inspirational quotes and the like. She wasn’t terribly impressed since she is even LESS “kum-bye-ah” than I am. Since then, we pretty much gave up on it until last year when I wrote special messages for the boys each day.

This year, I included candy with the messages. Oh, it was much more exciting this year, although the boys quickly learned that there aren’t a lot of skinny candies. They got bored with the suckers by Christmas. Also this year, however, were messages for activities to be enjoyed. Not only did I tell them how much I like this behavior or that action, I also let each of them pick a movie to rent or where we would go out to eat dinner or have a night at the movies.

In addition to the advent calendar, we also had a hand-written countdown of “cool things to do.” We did this out of desperation because it turns out that five-year-olds do NOT really like to listen, get along, comply, eat, act nicely, or do anything that a parent wants them to do. (I get it. It’s all about testing the boundaries, growing up, learning who they are, blah, blah, blah. It’s also really frustrating.) So, each day, we would pick a behavior to focus on like “no yelling,” or “use nice words,” or “LISTEN!” This did work with some success although it did make it easier to tattle on one another.