A Very Brato Christmas

For about 25 days we've had a visitor in our house. Brato (Owen named him) is an elf who gets into mischief but who has a job to do also. His job is to see if Owen has been a good boy or naughty. He then flies up to the North Pole every night and reports to Santa. This is why we can't touch Brato, because, like butterflies, if you touch him, he can't fly (unless, of course, that's a line my parents told me about butterflies, in which case... ha ha [being a science teacher, I should probably figure that out]).

The whole endeavor seemed a little Orwellian at first, but being on the other side of all that monitoring sure gives insight into why monitoring on that level is so appealing. Any time Owen does something wrong he says, "Brato tell Santa about that?" As loving parents, we have tried to very much limit how hard we use this leverage over him, but it's tough because it's so effective.

Moving beyond the morality of the whole situation, we have had fun with Brato in the evenings. He appears in a different spot every morning for Owen to discover. Staging him in 25 different ways has proven a slightly challenging, yet eminently rewarding midnight task. Owen has really enjoyed our guest and since tonight he will be returning home to the North Pole, we thought we'd share some of our favorite 2011 Brato moments.







Bonus: Holiday Owenisms

Why does Santa eat so many cookies? He needs to be careful. He's going to get a tummy ache!

Daddy. I need help. I can't wait till Christmas time.

On Christmas night, Santa will come and I'm going to sleep with one eye open so I can see him.

I'm dirty with Christmas! (Said after playing with artificial snow.)

Momma! We ate all the cookies! We need to make more cookies for Santa.