Whispers

Each year since I was in my early teens, my mother has made an advent calendar. Until a few years ago, it was for me. Now she makes four of them - one for each of her grandchildren. This is a slightly different advent calendar though. She gets 24 small presents, wraps each one and ties it to a ribbon. Then each morning of advent, the recipient gets to come downstairs and open the bottom present on the ribbon. It's a lot of fun and even though the gifts are fairly small items, it's exciting to find out each day what awaits you.

This year is the first time that Kara has had her own calendar. And the kids have been very good about opening them together so far. The other day though, Kara had gotten up early and was watching some tv before John came down. Once he gets up, he's ready to do the calendar and has had a hard time waiting for Kara to be ready. So this particular day, he asked Kara if she was ready to open her advent present and she said no. He asked several more times, with no change in her response. Then he changed his tactic. He went over to her and softly whispered in her ear about the benefits of opening her present sooner rather than later. It was so cute. And a moment later, she was jumping down off the couch ready to go find out what the daily treasure was. It was so sweet and definitely a little funny. He's figuring out that often he can convince her to go along with something he wants to do if he just acts sweet towards her. They're getting more mischievous as a pair!

I can hardly wait to see what the little whispers might result in during the new year!