The advent calendar

The advent calendar. Each year I look forward to getting them for the girls. For the past few years Grandma Mower - who is no relation to us (she's my brother-in-law's mother) has bought my girls their advent calendar. This year the 5th of December rolled around and I realized that I didn't have my calendars! I thought about Grandma Mower and realized that she had recently been in the hospital and I was probably not getting calendars this year. My crafty little brain started turning and I started searching for ideas to count down the days until Christmas. Luckily, my crafty little brain got side tracked and Rachel (Grandma Mower's actual granddaughter) showed up with our calendars that very night! We were all super excited to get the calendars. Rachel helped get them all caught up.



The next morning I noticed Macie was in the "don't look at me I'm doing something really bad over here" corner. So I went to investigate and found that she had taken her calendar over to the "Don't look at me I'm doing something really bad corner" and eaten the entire thing. She got in huge trouble. So, each night now when her sisters eat theirs, she gets to watch them and I remind her of how naughty she was for eating all of hers.



A few days ago I got out of the shower and opened the bathroom door and found Macie sitting on the floor - with her "Oh crap, I've been caught again" look on her face, surrounded by advent calendars.

"Macie, what's in your mouth?"

"Noshing" (As she's trying to keep her mouth closed over the chocolate).

"Macie, did you eat from Lindsay and Maddie's calendars?"

She finally nodded.

She got yelled at by me and by Lindsay (Maddie's wrath was later unfolded upon her when she got home from school).

"You shouldn't eat someone else's calendar, that's naughty."

Tears.

"Well, you shouldn't leave them where I can reach them, Mom!" (I had to do a double take, she sounded just like Maddie when she said it).

She did have a point, right?



Another morning Maddie popped out of bed and asked right away if she could have her chocolate. I said no, you need to have breakfast first. She said,
"Humph....then I'm not telling you what I want for breakfast."

"Fine" I say and I go downstairs and pour her a bowl of cocoa puffs instead of her usual breakfast sandwich or waffle. I thought I was punishing her. Jeramy looked in her bowl and said, "So, you wouldn't let her have her chocolate candy before breakfast, but you just gave her a large bowl of chocolate cereal?"

Yup.

I did.

That'll teach her to ask for chocolate in the morning.