Advent Calendar

Matilda got an advent calendar from her Aunt Lori and Uncle Gordie in Arizona last week. I was putting Porter to sleep in the back bedroom when I heard her receiving it. While she had one last year, she seemed to have forgotten the whole little chocolate in each window deal. After Aunt Lori explained it to her I heard her go running off to find Tim exclaiming about how this special calendar she got had a chocolate in it and each day you got to eat one!!! Tim was then chatting with Lori explaining the great tradition they have in our friend Frusl's Swiss town. Each day a different family in the village opens their shutters to reveal a window specially decorated for 1 of the 24 days of December. Lori was starting to say how that sounded so fun when Matilda cut her off, loudly saying, "Yes, but here in California we get CHOCOLATE everyday for ours." (Nevermind the fact that we weren't in California at that particular moment.) I like to think of it as chocolate-centrism rather than ethnocentrism.

A few days ago Matilda had a panic, asking me what week it was, which was an unusual question for her since she doesn't quite grasp the days/weeks thing. It turns out she had remembered the advent calendar and wanted to verify when exactly the chocolate-a-day policy started. This morning Tim & I conferred and agreed that she could get her chocolate each day AFTER eating breakfast, primarily because we didn't think we had the endurance for listening to the chocolate-yet, chocolate-yet questions any further into the day.