Birdie's return

As I'm always on the hunt for new ways to bribe Emmylou into behaving, it's nice that with the joyous Christmas season comes the return of Birdie, our Elf on the Shelf. If you don't know, Birdie works for Santa and is specifically assigned to watch Emmylou and Miller each day. He reports on their naughty-or-nice-ness each night when he flies back to the North Pole and then returns to hide in a new spot in our house each morning. Emmylou absolutely loves looking for him when she wakes up (he's the first thing she asks about) and it's pretty easy to get her to do/stop doing something if I threaten to tell Birdie about it. He even takes cell phone calls from HEB, if you can believe it.

Although she's asking a lot of logistical questions this year such as, "Mommy, how does Birdie fly all the way to the North Pole every night?" and, "How does Birdie talk to tell Santa I've been good?" (yes, she's realized he's clearly an inanimate object) she seems mildly satisfied when I answer by saying "it's magic!" (I try to put lots of enthusiasm behind it so it's more convincing.)

The other day she decided to draw Birdie a picture, which sounds really sweet but I think it was really an attempt to make up for some earlier misbehaving. Birdie happened to be watching her and Miller from the Christmas tree that day and when I came into the room later I saw that she had rolled up her picture and put it right next to him so he could take it back with him to the North Pole that night.