Holiday Traditions: Book Advent

Once again we are counting down to Christmas in books. I described our book advent calendar, for which I wrap up one (or more) books for each day from Dec 1-24, last year. I label each package, which is wrapped in some plain green newsprint-type paper (which is used for putting under hardwood floors--gotta love living with a carpenter--not sure if this stuff is available at your average hardware store or not, but if it is you should totally invest in a roll; this is the third year we've wrapped 24 books with the same roll, as well as other presents here and there, and at least part of the roll is under our floor), with the date (so the Hanukkah book comes out on Hanukkah, and the Night Before Christmas comes out the Night Before Christmas) and the name of kid who is to open it, to prevent fistfights (one hopes).

This year I created another undercover crate (more Flower Fairies!) to hold the wrapped books---from there I suppose they'll move to the open bookshelf and get read more than once, perhaps.

I was up late Monday night attempting to wrap 24 books/book pairs without tape (because of my anti-plastic shtick, I haven't bought tape all year--the irony is that my husband was sitting at the computer estimating how much it would cost to fill his customers' houses with plastic--have I never mentioned this is what he does for a living? Kinda makes my roll of tape seem insignificant, but it's the principle of the thing) when I realized I could go to bed with only about half of them wrapped--I had 24 days in which to finish after all--and who would notice? Of course immediately upon getting up, E began pawing through the books, causing the red yarn I had used to hold the paper on to slip off some of the packages, and noted, "I don't have the most!" and when Z got up, he did the same, asking, "Is this all of them." Damn preschool, why did they have to teach them how to count?

At bedtime when it was E's turn to open the first book, Z had a huge crying fit and I threatened to unwrap them all myself and forget the whole thing. Do you ever wonder if, despite your best intentions, you do more harm than good and should just sit your kids in front of the TV with a big bag of Doritos?

Usually family or friends give each kid an advent calendar (or more), but this year they didn't. I briefly considered looking for one when I was out on Sunday, but then I reasoned I'd have to buy three (taking turns can be really really hard sometimes), and I just didn't feel like adding one more disposable thing to my life right now. I saw some kits at the fabric store for making little pocket wall hanging calendars, which I might consider doing in the future, but that still leaves the problem of one or three? As well as what to put in the pockets? I want to get away from the idea of this time of year being about stuff, so I definitely don't want to give a gift (or even a piece of candy) to my kids every day for the 24 days leading up to the biggest greedy day of them all. Maybe putting a piece of our winter village in each pocket, which I saw here last year (I think we actually have an old felt pocket calendar that was C's growing up that I could use)...or maybe we can just be content with our book advent.