'Daddy, Is It Tomorrow?'

When we were kids, my brothers and I would go nuts over our Advent calendar. I remember how exciting it was to open the tiny window each day, knowing we were 24 hours closer to Christmas.

Behind each window was a picture — something related to the story of Jesus.

A picture...that's all. And yet this was somehow thrilling. (Making it more absurd: We'd recycle the same calendar more than one year, so I'd seen the pictures before.)

Well, nowadays kids have more options. Many Advent calendars have chocolates inside, and there's even one with Legos. (A co-worker got this for his children.)

Why is the cop about to arrest a Christmas tree?

For Elliot, we bought the Trader Joe's Advent calendar, which somehow is only 99 cents (is this a loss leader?). Elliot loves it.

But he's also at an age when he's very easy to satisfy (or maybe this is his personality?) and makes no assumptions about anything.

Every day, we'll take out the calendar and get ready to open one of the windows.

"I wonder what it's going to be," Elliot says.

After it's revealed to be chocolate (spoiler alert: they're all chocolate), he'll say, "Mmm...chocolate!"

Then we'll tell him he has to wait until tomorrow to open another one.

That leads to him frequently asking if it's tomorrow yet. Kelly tried to explain that it will never be tomorrow; it's always today. But that didn't seem to clear things up. (In fact, I started to get confused myself.)

Anyway, Elliot seems most excited about the ritual and doing an activity with his parents.

I'm pretty sure he'd be perfectly thrilled to open the window and just stare at a picture.