Warning: If you are a child or an adult who believes in the magic of Christmas I would not continue with this column. Just step away from #MomLife this week. Also, mild swearing.
Have you heard of The Elf on the Shelf? If you have any type of social media, I’m sure you have. If by some sort of miracle you haven’t, then I applaud you for staying away from this horrible little creature. Unfortunately my children were gifted one 3 years ago and since then the little mischievous elf has tortured me every night from December 1st through the 25th.
My elf hates me. He causes me so much stress trying to come up with the perfect Pinterest ideas every night. My kids have even commented on how lazy our elf is because he doesn’t make fun messes like little Tommy or Suzy’s elves do. But let’s be real for a moment, the Elf on the Shelf sucks. They are annoying, stressful, messy little shits that don’t deter my kid from being naughty like they claim to do. All they do is mess with stuff and give me anxiety.
Let’s talk about the messy elves. The elves that spread flour and cake batter and other miscellaneous food items all over the house. Why would you do that to yourself? Isn’t that just asking for mice or bugs to join your house? Don’t you realize that you will inevitably have to clean up after the thing? Why are you creating more work for yourself? Just why?
And then we move onto the elves who TP the house. In this Covid world we all know that toilet paper is worth more than gold right now. Why are you wasting perfectly good TP? Are you going to recycle it and reuse it after it’s done its job? Is that weird? Is reusing toilet paper a thing? It may be funny in the beginning but in the end, who is left to clean up after that annoying thing? Yep, once again, you are.
You would think since we have had the elf for 3 years now that my Pinterest folder would be full of clever ideas and I would be excited every night to move the elf to a new spot in the house. But I’ll be honest with you, I forget about this thing at least a dozen times. I am constantly running around the next morning trying to hide the elf in a new spot before my son wakes up. While I am searching for a semi-decent spot to move the little shit to, I feel like this thing is laughing at me the whole time. Taunting me. Hating me. Making me hate myself.
So what do you do when you hate something so much but you can’t get away from it? Well you complain about it on social media of course. I complained so much that my family member actually thought I liked it and bought me more! She bought me accessories for it. So what did I have to do? I had to use them. So now, not only do we have Dasher Elfish the Elf, we also have a reindeer named Professor Prancer that I’m responsible for! What have I gotten myself into? Why do I let myself get so stressed over a stupid elf that isn’t real? And why haven’t I just broken the news to my child that it’s not real?
I think secretly I like seeing Nathan believe in the magic. I like seeing him so innocent and naive about the world around him. And let’s face it, the laugh he gives when he finds the elf is infectious. But just because I like seeing him happy doesn’t mean I have to like the work involved to make it happen. I do it because I’m a mom and moms have to do annoying things because their children like it. But I swear to God, next year, the elf is getting shelved.
Steph Hightree is a hot mess mom who is fueled by stress and too much caffeine. She is a Three Rivers native who talks about the good, the bad, and well, everything else about parenthood.
Any views or opinions expressed in “#MomLife” are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the Watershed Voice staff or its board of directors.
