Decking the halls.

It's Christmas time, and things. Last year, I decorated while Eleanor slept, and it was fun to have her come upstairs and be like, *mind blown* but THIS YEAR I've gotten really stingy about what I do with nap time.

So I decorated while she was awake, and she spent the whole time exclaiming over everything I pulled out of the box, and marveling at things, and basically that's how I decorate from now on.

I let her greet the nutcrackers and play with her stocking (it is for feets)

but told her not to touch anything else, and she very carefully did not. She is a Direction Follower.

My mum made her an advent calendar last year, the kind you can re-stock from year to year, and last year mum put gourmet chocolates in it for Eleanor's mum (which is me). This year I wanted Eleanor to have her own thing because she is big and Aware Of Stuff, but I don't necessarily want to put chocolates in her face every day, so I filled the calendar with ornaments and we made a Christmas tree to hang them on.

Eleanor helped. In the naked nude, obviously, because no matter how well you follow directions, paint gets on the birthday suit.

Now they hang on either side of the candy cane wreath. I let Eleanor choose where she wants to hang the ornament every morning, obviously. It'll fill out eventually.

We're also doing the Elf on the Shelf again this year. I know, I know, he's seriously creepy and the whole internet either gets too into the entire thing or feels strongly and negatively about it. But I don't concoct elaborate scenes for him, I just move him around the house, and Eleanor thinks he's just magical.

I don't tell her the whole ball of wax about how he watches to see if she's good and goes back to the North Pole every night to report to Santa, because I'm sort of not into lying to my kids. I just move him at night, and every morning it's like an Easter Egg Hunt for one creepy-looking egg.

The idea itself is delightful, even if the elf himself is exorbitantly expensive and the book he comes with is long on propaganda and short on actual story and fun prose. If it makes my kid happy, it makes me happy, because she makes me happy.