Bell-Bell

Three years ago I was nine months pregnant with a ten pound baby and wasn't thinking straight.  I was in Target one day hobbling along and saw that damn Elf on the Shelf and thought Awwww, how cute!  My boys will love having an elf!

This is ironic because at the time I was a miserable bitch who found no joy in life whatsoever.  Nothing was even remotely cute to me.  Nothing...except that creepy elf.

And once you're in, you're in.  I got to pinning all the cute antics an elf can get into and my husband and I started out having a blast, but then what do you do when the elf is fishing in your toilet and you have to pee?  You can't move him.  The book says so!  He'll lose his magic!  We can't have Bell-Bell lose his magic!  (That's our elf's name--Bell-Bell.  Sal named him.)

Once he took a bath in marshmallows, only I forgot that the cat LOVES marshmallows and Bell-Bell was accosted and there were marshmallow paw prints all over my dining room table.  The boys burst into tears because the cat had touched Bell-Bell and his magic was gone.  No, animals have Christmas magic, too, so they can't hurt elf magic.  Oh, the lies I've told in the last three years.

Now, compound the elf pressure with the fact that I haven't really gotten along with Christmas the last several years.  Something always seems to happen that makes the holiday very difficult to enjoy.  Our first Christmas with Sal we were battling some pretty serious ear infections that could not be cured.  We were also facing him having surgery in the new year on his penis.  His foreskin was slightly twisted, so he'd need to have a special circumcision to correct it.  It's all fine now, but at the time, well, you can imagine.  Two Christmases later we were at the emergency vet on Christmas Eve with our dog who somehow injured her back.  The vet said she'd never walk or run again and we were faced with putting her down.  (The vet was wrong and it turned out all right, but that Christmas was pretty awful.)  The Christmas after that was following my unemployment. Then there was Sandy Hook.  That was the worst.  Sal was a first grader at the time, and well, that hit very close to home.  I was ready to pack it all up, but you can't when you have kids. I think most of us went through the motions that year.  Last year, the cat's tail got lopped off in the door.

Life doesn't stop for Christmas, or for that damn elf!  But, this year I stumbled across advent activities to do with your kids each day leading up to Christmas, and I thought what better way to love that elf again and maybe to start enjoying Christmas again.  This instantly became my December challenge.  Twenty-four days of stopping and spending time with my boys care of Bell-Bell.  You see, Bell-Bell brings us the activity each day.  There are no antics this year.  Each day he turns up in a different spot with a little note.  Some are simple little crafts (I only do simple.)  Some are activities we have to do anyway, so we just worked them into the schedule.  Here is what he's had us do so far:

December 1st:  Bell-Bell appeared with his book and movie and we read and watched the movie together.

December 2nd:  Bell-Bell put out some paper and markers and the boys wrote their letters to Santa.  (This was fun because it was the first year Eli was able to write his own letter.)

December 3rd:  Bell-Bell brought out the manger and we set up the nativity together.

December 4th:  Family game night!

December 5th:  Bell-Bell built a pyramid out of some canned goods and instructed us to go to the grocery store and pick out a few more to drop off at the food pantry.  (Took the bags to church with me yesterday!)

December 6th:  Make reindeer food.  I passed this one off to my husband as he hadn't done much with them and I was out of the house that morning.  What's reindeer food?  Oatmeal and sugar mixed together.  We had some colored sugar so that made it festive looking.

December 7th:  Bell-Bell told us that we were to go to the tree farm and pick out our tree.  Our tree farm even has tractor rides.

December 8th:  Today Bell-Bell brought decorated paper for us to make paper chains.  (I bought these strips from Oriental Trading a few years ago for a couple bucks and never got around to doing them with the boys.  They have sat at the bottom of a storage tub far too long.  Bell-Bell is also helping us to clean out.)

There are the people that hate the elf and have banned him from their homes.  Then there are the people that love the elf and the set-ups and the antics.  And for the record, I don't feel these people are doing these elaborate set-ups to outdo the neighbor's elf.  I think they do it because it's fun.  I mean, it is fun.  We made some pretty cool scenes, and the boys loved it.  But, suddenly it became work.  Suddenly, I hated Bell-Bell.  I don't want to hate Bell-Bell.  Bell-Bell is magic.  Bell-Bell is love.  He's our own special elf.

Bell-Bell, this year, is my therapist.  He's still a little bit of work, but the end result of the work isn't a toilet I can't use for an entire day.  The end result is a few minutes to sit down with my boys and forget about the checkbook or the interview or homework.  So Bell-Bell is good this year.