The elf is most assuredly on the shelf. Even in baseball’s off-season, the injuries can pile up. Especially when you pit a few ounces of innocent felt against 58 pounds of curious canine.
Last year, my girls joined an ever-growing number of children whose holiday seasons are now overseen by a wide-eyed creature dressed in red. The “Elf on the Shelf” has taken the Christmas season by storm, adding several more reasons for children to be nice rather than naughty. This elf is a wee 13 inches from his toes to the point of his red cap. He’s dressed in red and white felt, and his big blue eyes stare at you with a mixture of wonder and wildness.
He sits in a spot inside our house each day, watching the girls closely with those big eyes. At night, he flies to the North Pole to give Santa a kid-behavior report, then catches the red-eye back to our house by morning. Each day, we find him in a different surveillance spot.
The girls named our elf Freddie last November, and declared that he was a she. A white skirt was produced, and Freddie seemed to enjoy her time with us last year. But oh, how things have changed.
In February, the girls’ birthday gift was a very cute and fluffy golden retriever puppy named Daisy. Some nine months later, that puppy has grown plenty big and strong. In late November of this year, Daisy met little Freddie. It began with a sniff here, and a tail-wag there. And then it got ugly.
One morning, Freddie thought she’d be safe inside a ceramic boot Christmas-card holder. It felt secure enough to her. But Freddie forgot to take into account that she was now within Daisy’s reach. What happened next, only Daisy and Freddie know for sure. I can only describe the grisly aftermath.
The dog was standing over the red elf, whose body lay splayed across the rug. Daisy was licking the red fabric of Freddie’s jacket, but that was certainly not the worst of it. As my wife picked up Freddie, she noticed the tear. The elf’s right shoulder was partially detached from her body. This was a torn rotator cuff of the worst sort. Were Freddie a pitcher, she’d be out of action until 2012.
In the case of felt elves, glue surgery works better than anything involving tendons, ligaments and bone spurs. Freddie was given a night off from flying, and permitted to rest on the kitchen counter while the glue hardened. By morning, she was scarred, but ready to return to work.
Daisy turned one year old on Thursday, and we celebrated by giving our dog some toys and treats. She’s matured in plenty of ways over the past year, from knowing when and where to poop to knowing how to sit, stay and roll over. But there are other ways in which Daisy is still very much a puppy. She still has a tendency to view her own poop as a snack, and she has a fetish for dirty socks, tissues and just about anything else left on the floor. As my dad has noted, she is no scholar.
When Daisy goes after a newspaper or a paper-towel roll, she gets disciplined and hides beneath the table. She knows, in some way, that the thing she just did was wrong. In the case of Freddie, she did the same. But at this moment, her loss of self-control had done more than just damage some paper. It had placed an innocent helper of St. Nick on the North Pole Disabled List. For a half a second or two, I think Daisy might have felt badly about it. But then she moved on.
As for Freddie, I don’t think she’ll ever forget the night she and Daisy met face to face. Elves can do a lot of cool things, but even Santa can’t save them from the nosiness of a golden retriever. The shelf can never be high enough.
Showing posts with label Elf on the Shelf. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Elf on the Shelf. Show all posts
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Very Merry
We head out for a drive, and my wife pops in the new Bob Dylan Christmas CD. It’s Amy’s latest attempt at persuading me to listen to holiday music earlier in the season: Buy an album by one of my favorites, and dare me to turn it off. Smart move, of course. The music begins, and it’s a stunning sensory experience – the ol’ man’s craggy voice, playfully croaking out “Here Comes Santa Claus.”
This CD has been widely praised by music critics, but none of the reviews I read were written by a 7-year-old. Katie listens quietly for a moment, then offers her own critique: “Mommy, he sounds like he has to cough.”
Leave it to the babes to put it all in perspective. They are, after all, front and center this time of year. Whether it’s the holiday decorations, the letters to Santa, or – get this – the “Elf on the Shelf” who hops from one perch to another each night in our house, ‘tis the season for bringin’ out the wonder. (And spoiling them to the core as well, but that’s kind of a lost cause, especially when even Bob Dylan’s on board the sleigh.)
We try to let the merriment win out over the stress, but that can be hard when you’ve got an elf on your shelf. When Santa delivered this, it was designed in part to help an older sister who has been struggling in recent years to hold onto the magic. Katie’s had her doubts about the man in red, yet has also expressed a deep desire to believe. So when a little red elf appears on the entertainment center, with an accompanying book explaining that Santa has sent him to keep an eye out, the kid is fascinated at first. Until, of course, she lies down in the dark of her bedroom and sees the little guy’s big, brown eyes staring at her. She panics, and begins to cry.
“Why do we do this to her?” I ask Santa. “Don’t worry,” she says. The next day, Katie has rebounded nicely, naming the elf “Freddie,” declaring that he is a she, and asking us to buy a dress for the thing. Merry, indeed.
The joy of giving has long won out over the joy of receiving for Amy and me, and our favorite moments during this season always involve hosting friends, or shopping for others, or giving gifts. We’ve developed a little tradition in recent years of going out on Black Friday, at about 10 in the morning, to see if we can find a few deals. Shopping on the day after Thanksgiving is a lot like baseball’s free agent market at this time of year – there are a ton of potential purchases out there, some of them at really good prices. But still, you wonder, is it worth the money even if it’s 50 percent off?
We decide that the new Wii “Winter Sports” game, with two motion sensor devices thrown in, is worth $50, and so Amy now knows one of the gifts in her stocking. I tell her that the new Pearl Jam CD for $6.50 is a great deal, so there goes a drop in my stocking. We decide that three dispensers of Bath & Body Works antibacterial soap are not worth standing in a line 25 deep, even with the $10 sales price, especially considering the Centers for Disease Control’s advice against overusing antibacterial products in the home.
They are merry all right in Bath & Body Works – at least a hundred Black Friday shoppers, most of them women, smelling body wash and trying out hand-held massagers. Their voices, when jumbled together, sound something like Charlie Brown’s mother in the old Charles Schulz animated specials: “Whaaa … whaaa .. whaaa.” I take in the bustle for a moment, then begin to feel something akin to Katie’s feelings about Freddie, and bolt for the door.
It’s quieter in the car a day later, as we drive home from a Thanksgiving visit to Amy’s parents. The girls are watching a movie on the DVD player, while I pay attention to brake lights, speed limits and asphalt. As the movie ends, the girls watch the two principal characters kiss. Katie lets out a big ol’ second grade “Ewwwww.” Her 4-year-old sister, on the other hand, has a different take. “Katie, you know, someday we’ll be doing that too,” she says.
I manage, just barely, to keep the car on the road.
And so the holidays begin, with Dylan in need of some Ricola, Freddie popping up all around our house, the gifts piling up in the closet, and Chelsea talking with her sister about making out. She’s been chosen to play Mary for the preschool’s Christmas program, and the charming young boy who’s playing Joseph has been Chelsea’s “boyfriend” now for more than a year. She claimed him right away, and will no sooner give him up than she’ll relinquish the blanket she carries with her each day.
Should we worry about lovebirds in the stable? No, not yet. As she practiced her entrance into the church today, Chelsea happily skipped through the sanctuary, up to the manger. The preschool director asked: Chelsea, isn’t Mary supposed to be pregnant at this point? Chelsea nodded. True enough. Maybe a soft gallop next time.
It’s just so hard to hold back the merriment.
This CD has been widely praised by music critics, but none of the reviews I read were written by a 7-year-old. Katie listens quietly for a moment, then offers her own critique: “Mommy, he sounds like he has to cough.”
Leave it to the babes to put it all in perspective. They are, after all, front and center this time of year. Whether it’s the holiday decorations, the letters to Santa, or – get this – the “Elf on the Shelf” who hops from one perch to another each night in our house, ‘tis the season for bringin’ out the wonder. (And spoiling them to the core as well, but that’s kind of a lost cause, especially when even Bob Dylan’s on board the sleigh.)
We try to let the merriment win out over the stress, but that can be hard when you’ve got an elf on your shelf. When Santa delivered this, it was designed in part to help an older sister who has been struggling in recent years to hold onto the magic. Katie’s had her doubts about the man in red, yet has also expressed a deep desire to believe. So when a little red elf appears on the entertainment center, with an accompanying book explaining that Santa has sent him to keep an eye out, the kid is fascinated at first. Until, of course, she lies down in the dark of her bedroom and sees the little guy’s big, brown eyes staring at her. She panics, and begins to cry.
“Why do we do this to her?” I ask Santa. “Don’t worry,” she says. The next day, Katie has rebounded nicely, naming the elf “Freddie,” declaring that he is a she, and asking us to buy a dress for the thing. Merry, indeed.
The joy of giving has long won out over the joy of receiving for Amy and me, and our favorite moments during this season always involve hosting friends, or shopping for others, or giving gifts. We’ve developed a little tradition in recent years of going out on Black Friday, at about 10 in the morning, to see if we can find a few deals. Shopping on the day after Thanksgiving is a lot like baseball’s free agent market at this time of year – there are a ton of potential purchases out there, some of them at really good prices. But still, you wonder, is it worth the money even if it’s 50 percent off?
We decide that the new Wii “Winter Sports” game, with two motion sensor devices thrown in, is worth $50, and so Amy now knows one of the gifts in her stocking. I tell her that the new Pearl Jam CD for $6.50 is a great deal, so there goes a drop in my stocking. We decide that three dispensers of Bath & Body Works antibacterial soap are not worth standing in a line 25 deep, even with the $10 sales price, especially considering the Centers for Disease Control’s advice against overusing antibacterial products in the home.
They are merry all right in Bath & Body Works – at least a hundred Black Friday shoppers, most of them women, smelling body wash and trying out hand-held massagers. Their voices, when jumbled together, sound something like Charlie Brown’s mother in the old Charles Schulz animated specials: “Whaaa … whaaa .. whaaa.” I take in the bustle for a moment, then begin to feel something akin to Katie’s feelings about Freddie, and bolt for the door.
It’s quieter in the car a day later, as we drive home from a Thanksgiving visit to Amy’s parents. The girls are watching a movie on the DVD player, while I pay attention to brake lights, speed limits and asphalt. As the movie ends, the girls watch the two principal characters kiss. Katie lets out a big ol’ second grade “Ewwwww.” Her 4-year-old sister, on the other hand, has a different take. “Katie, you know, someday we’ll be doing that too,” she says.
I manage, just barely, to keep the car on the road.
And so the holidays begin, with Dylan in need of some Ricola, Freddie popping up all around our house, the gifts piling up in the closet, and Chelsea talking with her sister about making out. She’s been chosen to play Mary for the preschool’s Christmas program, and the charming young boy who’s playing Joseph has been Chelsea’s “boyfriend” now for more than a year. She claimed him right away, and will no sooner give him up than she’ll relinquish the blanket she carries with her each day.
Should we worry about lovebirds in the stable? No, not yet. As she practiced her entrance into the church today, Chelsea happily skipped through the sanctuary, up to the manger. The preschool director asked: Chelsea, isn’t Mary supposed to be pregnant at this point? Chelsea nodded. True enough. Maybe a soft gallop next time.
It’s just so hard to hold back the merriment.
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