He's Watching You!

By "he" I mean the elf. The elf on the shelf. For my birthday last month, my sister-in-law gave me an elf on the shelf. Her family has had an elf for years. He comes the day after Thanksgiving and hangs out in various places throughout the house to basically scare the kids into being good. This sounds a bit harsh, which isn't how I mean it. Its just taking the concept of "Santa knows if you've been naughty or nice" to a new level. Santa sends his elf to our house to watch the kids for him, then the elf reports back to Santa while the kids' sleep and tells him either, the kids were terrors that threw the cinnamon pine cones and every pair of sock down the stairs, or they were little angels who put all the toys away after school AND made their beds without being asked. Then he hides in a new place every morning. The elf knows all, and sees all.

Except....

So does Corbin, and he isn't buying it. He is unconvinced that the elf is real. The first time he saw that elf he recognized it. "Dallin and Bowen have one of those!" He said, "Why would they have one a long time ago and we just got one?" A very valid question. I hate lying to my kids (which is why we didn't get one of these years ago), so I just pretended to not know why. Later when Daddy came home from work Corbin said to him, "I don't think the elf is real. I think he's just a toy that you guys move around after we go to sleep." Does nothing get by this kid?! We didn't raise a dummy! It doesn't really matter anyway. Corbin is such a good kid, it really makes no difference if the elf is watching him or not. It's Dexter that needs to believe in the elf. He gets in trouble and it is no surprise that several times a day I catch the other kids reminding him that the elf is watching, and even more times that I remind him. For him its working, and that is awesome.

And whether or not Corbin believes that he's real does not come into play every morning when he rushes out of his room to find where the elf is hiding. He LOVES being the first one to find him.