Over the Christmas break, I undertook a little creative project that I’m rather proud of.
Now, I suppose I need to first offer a little background. My daughters, who I have nicknamed Wump and Toop for the purposes of this blog and most other online communication, have this little letterbox stuck on the side of a living room cabinet. It’s a “fairy post” box, where they can write tiny letters and then (notwithstanding the unreliable nature of the fairy post, because the fairies are often really busy and tired and can only come out after Wump and Toop are asleep and Wump at least doesn’t goddamn sleep) get a tiny letter in reply.
This usually occurs in Swedish, because Wump and Toop are within the Finnish fairy union jurisdiction and specifically the Finnish-Swedish subsystem. But over Christmas, Wump and Toop built a little picnic area and playground from doll house materials for the fairies to play in (during their breaks from important Christmas-related fairywork), and in gratitude the Finnish fairies got in touch with the Australian fairies and asked them to send a special surprise.
And because Wump and Toop had been mostly good all year, they didn’t send a spider.
What they did send was a special magic fairy tree seed:
This, according to clear and impeccably-written instructions that the Australian fairies seemed to be particularly good at writing, Wump and Toop planted in a little pot and sprinkled some sugar on top.
Then, over the course of the next few nights and random afternoons, the fairy tree began to grow:
And grow:
And grow:
It finally began to sprout some sort of leaves, which (after another communication from Wump and Toop and an instruction to add a bit more sugar) became a bud:
Then the bud opened and the tree began to produce candy.
I have a pile of candies prepared, and am considering dropping the seed back into the bud at some point so they can start over again. But it’s a fun, and fairly low-effort project, and of course Wump and Toop were massively excited by each new development.
I’m not sure if we’re instilling a sense of mystery and wonder to an otherwise mundane world, or committing a very intricate hoax that will set back our children’s credulity by months if not years.
Actually, I don’t know that we’re not doing both.
– Posted from my Huawei mobile phone while on the bus.
Hatboy's Hatstand 
Aww, that is so cute and awesome! Setback, shmetback! I don’t think my girls’ (ended) belief in Santa Claus set them back in credulity, not even close. And as soon as the veil was lifted we discovered they were pretending almost as much as we were XD
And wow, I think this is the first time I noticed that Wump and Toop are only for online purposes. All this time I thought you might be actually calling them that in person!
Damn. I always had a smile picturing you calling her Wump, in particular, because it is like “lump”.
Yeah, I don’t think it does any harm, and I’m pretty sure you’re right about the deception going both ways. How else are kids supposed to learn how to outsmart their parents and thus learn that they are only flawed humans? I keep catching this little sheepish smile on Wump’s face when she talks about the fairy post and Santa Claus and things of that nature. Like, she knows, but she wants to believe, and as long as we’re playing along and she knows we don’t think she’s an idiot, it’s all good fun.
Oh yeah, I have a lot of in-person nicknames for them both but Wump and Toop are purely for social media purposes. No real justification for it, just “it how they know you”, to borrow a line from Ace Ventura 2 for no real reason.
Oh man I know EXACTLY that smile, LOL
We’re still doing the “Elf on a Shelf”, moving him around every night leading up to Xmas (unless we forget), and …uhhh…Derpia…?….is still totally playing along. With a lot of sarco and snarko, but still playing along.
Awwwww….. that is amazing! ❤
Isn’t it though?
Wump was also hilariously cautious about the whole thing, not wanting to eat the candies because “they just grew from a tree we know nothing about, what if they’re poisonous or do some sort of bad-magic thing to us?”
They did eat the candies because I said it was fine (although I was also unable to resist suggesting that maybe eating enough of them would turn the girls into something), but they also sent another letter to the fairies asking them if they were certain it was okay to eat the candies.
Clever kids.
as opposed to these kids.
Let me answer your concerns with STFU and eat the ice cream.
Final tree postscript:
The tree didn’t give any more candy for a little while, so the girls added some more sugar to it. In a flurry of candy, the tree finally popped out of existence and left a seed behind. Ready to start over!
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