Elfity On The Shelfity

For those of you who do not have small children or have otherwise been living in seclusion, let me introduce you to Elf on the Shelf.  This creepy little guy has taken Christmas to a whole new level. No longer is it enough to tell our daughter that Santa will know what's up.  We have now infiltrated our house with a full on Christmas spy.



Part of the mystique behind elf on a shelf is that children cannot touch him.  If they do, he will lose his magic.  Instead, parents place him on a perch somewhere in the house under the guise that the elf is watching everything that goes on and will report back to Santa.  In theory, it's supposed to serve as a tool get your child to behave until Christmas morning. In practice, we're already having some mixed results.

It started when Nana and Grandpa stopped by to celebrate Nana's birthday (Happy, Happy, Mom!) - They read the cute little book to Morgan and talked to her about how the elf works. Morgan even got to name him.  I didn't want to end up with some random name like Shoelace or Bologna (I'm a control freak, I'll own it), so I gave her two lovely Italian names to choose from:  Mario or Luigi.  She picked Mario -- strong choice.

Once they finished reading, it was time to see just where Mario had set up camp for his first night in our house.  Being the good little Italian elf that he is, he took a spot on top of our wine rack -


That's Mario, way back there, already lurking.



But then, as usual, things got derailed.  Because we were excited to use Mario as leverage to get Morgan to follow the rules, we had already told her Mario would be reporting back to Santa on whether she ate her dinner and picked up her toys. Girlfriend decided that this was not sufficient and that Santa was going to need the whole story.  She ran to the bathroom and scurried back with her toothbrush.  Morgan then grabbed David by the back of the hair and swung his head in the direction of Mario.  "Dad, tell Mario I am brushing my teeth RIGHT now. Tell him that I am a listener and that he needs to tell Santa TONIGHT." 

Oh yeah, he's telling Santa...right after he takes two aspirin and puts some ice on that head injury.