Not only am I bad at math, but I am numerically impaired in general. I never know the date unless I look at a calendar. I can’t look at a Monopoly board and know where to move my piece without counting one by one. And I can never tell you how many weeks remain between now and “then.”
 

In fact, during my first pregnancy I finished my “Your pregnancy week by week” book two weeks early because I lost track along the way.
 

So you can imagine how lost I was last year when we somehow ended up with three Christmas countdown calendars going simultaneously.
 

Every morning between Thanksgiving and Christmas began with a “disagreement” among the kids over whose turn it was turn glue a cotton ball on Santa’s beard, change the number of days till Christmas on the little chalkboard or open the next window on the Advent calendar.
 

Since I’m sure there’s a special circle of hell reserved for moms who yell at their kids about the Advent calendar, I was just going to let Christmas sneak up on us this year.
 

Then one day last week Owen, the 6-year-old, came running in from the backyard with a sweet gift from our next-door neighbor: three little cardboard Advent calendars with a piece of chocolate behind every perforated door.
 

“Look, Catherine gave us our Advent calendars!” Owen said breathlessly. “But I can’t open it yet. What day can I open it?”

I put down the shirt I was folding. “Uh, hmmm…what date is it today?”

“Saturday,” Owen chirped.
 

“I mean the number. What’s the date?” I asked. I yelled to one of my 13-year-olds for help. The best part about having older kids is that you can delegate the hard stuff, like counting, to them.
 

“Mason! What’s the date?!” Of course, he knew, and every day after that Owen asked me if “today” was the day he could open the door for his first piece of chocolate.
 

His next most frequently asked question involved the Christmas decorations. After my husband Tim “surprised” me by bringing all 1 million of our Christmas bins down from the attic, Owen’s excitement overflowed.
 

“Can I help you put out the decorations?”
 

“Not yet,” I sighed. “I still have to put away the Thanksgiving stuff.”
 

Next day: “Can I help you put out the decorations?”
 

“Not right now,” said the meanest and most tired mom on earth. “After dinner tonight, we can put up the stockings.”

One hour later: “Can I just open the lid and look in one bin? Oh, what’s this? Can I unwrap this one? I won’t touch it. Oh, can I just put this one on the shelf?”
 

Finally, I relented. I found the bin of mostly wooden and fabric decorations and told him to put the stuff wherever he thought it worked best.
 

Feeling brave, I did hang the little countdown chalkboard on the kitchen wall. It’s preprinted with “____ Days to Christmas,” and every morning Owen slides a kitchen chair over and climbs up to replace the tiny number he wrote the day before with a new one. The 6 was the hardest. He wrote it backward every single time until I finally guided his hand.
 

The first day the chalkboard was up, though, he asked me what number he should write in the blank.
 

“Mason!”

Brentwood resident Jill Burgin calls her column Joyride because you never know where she’ll end up. E-mail her at tjburgin@comcast.net. Read her recent columns by clicking here.