Our four-year-old, Ada, wakes up and asks the same thing every morning:

“Momma, is it Christmas?”

“Nope, Sis,” I say. “It isn’t Christmas.”

“Is it my birthday?” she says.

“Nope, it isn’t your birthday either.”

“What is today then?”

“It’s Tuesday,” I say as I work my fingers through her still-damp braid.

“Well. Okay. But is tomorrow going to be Christmas?”

She likes to count how many “sleeps” she has leading up to things she may be looking forward to like visits with grandparents or holidays so I decided to make our Advent calendar a visual way for her to count down the nights until Christmas while adding some magic to a plain, old Tuesday.

Here’s how it works: At night, the kids get to unwrap one of the packages leading up to their bedroom. Each one contains a bedtime story that we’ll read together. Crazy easy right?! We had more Christmas books than I realized and I bet you do, too. You could even do this with library books! I wrapped ours in simple brown paper and decorated them with crayons, yarn and number stickers. You could go even simpler and just do the 12 days leading up to Christmas if you want.

I’d love to stay and chat but I’ve got a bedtime story to read ;)