Lilly is almost 9 years old. She's in 3rd grade, she goes to daycare, she's dying to be grown up, she loves fashion and cell phones, her favorite TV show is "Friends". She's beginning to doubt the existence of Santa.
Now we've had the discussions before: you have to believe in Santa for Christmas to be fun and magical; if you don't believe who knows what will happen?! But, like all kids at one time or another, she comes home from school and asks me why some kids say there isn't a Santa. I go through my usual schpeel and she sits there and nods at me. "I'm going to keep believing Mommy," she says, "I just don't think it would be fun if I didn't." Ahhh, staving off the inevitable just a little while longer!
On Christmas Eve we were all running around making sure we got the gifts to bring to Murmur & Papa's, grabbing the cookie trays for the neighbors, etc. etc. for our trip to the Reedy's for Christmas. We all finally packed into the car and happily went from neighbor to neighbor passing out plates of Christmas cookies and off to the farm we went!
After hours of goodies, hors d' oeuvre's, presents, games and merriment (complete with Murmur playing Christmas carols on the trumpet) we headed home to get the little ones in bed so that Santa wouldn't skip our house. Logan passed out less than 5 minutes down the road as we completely expected. Lilly is a night person like me so she was looking around outside at the Christmas lights. Suddenly she started to giggle to herself.
"Guess what I did," she smirks.
"What?" I say.
"I left a note for the Elf. AND I left my broken headband for him to fix. I can't wait to get home to see if he wrote me back and see if he fixed my headband!" (As a side note, if you aren't already familiar with the story of The Elf on the Shelf I strongly suggest you check it out.)
"Crap!" I think to myself and cast a sideways glance at Brandon. I can see he's thinking the exact same thing, "how the hell are we going to pull this off!"
I know it's a test. I know that she left it there on the piano and didn't say a word because she knew that we would have no way to mess with the note or the headband since we were on our way out the door. We HAVE to keep the classic kiddy deception alive! So I quietly search through my purse for a piece of paper (which is a rarity in my purse, by the way). I finally tear a piece of paper out of my Christmas planner, swiftly find a pen and begin scribbling a note with my left hand in the light cast off the streetlights every 100 feet or so. Yeah, not easy.
As we pull up our driveway, and she is still awake - OF COURSE, I tell her to make sure she stays in her seat until Daddy gets Logan out of his car seat. "We don't want to wake him up you know," I waive my finger at her. "OK," she says. I grab the keys from Brandon and run into the house, quickly mentioning something about having to change Logan's sheets super fast, swing by the piano, grab up the stuff she left for the elf, run into the bedroom to stash it in a secret hiding place, leave the note "the elf" wrote on her bed, and get into Logan's room and start changing the sheets.
She comes up the stairs a few minutes later and wanders into her room. Screams and shrieks come wailing from her room. "HE WROTE ME BACK! LOOK DADDY! HE WROTE ME BACK! AND HE TOOK MY HEADBAND! OH MY GOSH, THIS IS THE HAPPIEST DAY OF MY LIFE!"
Ahhhhhhh, we did it. We pulled it off. She still believes.
A parent's job requires all kinds of tasks. The payoff is the best thing EVER!
I still haven't gotten a chance to look at the note she left our elf. Once I do I will post it here.
Nik
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