Twelve Days of Christmas Calculations

Every year, I do the "Twelve Days of Christmas" for Ryan. Now, before you all think he's a spoiled brat, the gifts I give him are pretty small. For example, this year I finished buying the rest of the "Magic Tree House" books so he has the whole set. He got one new book for a few of the days. One of his gifts one Sunday was a tie with the Stripling Warriors on it, and another Sunday I gave him a Liahona toy that goes along with his Book of Mormon figures.

One morning before Christmas, he was sitting at the kitchen table with a piece of paper making rows and rows of tally marks. When I asked him what he was doing, he said, "Just a minute." A couple of minutes later, he said, "Mom, according to my calculations, you should be giving me 78 gifts for the Twelve Days of Christmas!" He had started with one tally mark for day one, and had gone all the way to twelve tally marks for day twelve, then counted them up. I laughed pretty hard, and then explained to him that he was pretty darn lucky to be getting ANY gifts through the Twelve Days of Christmas! I was NOT ABOUT to tell him that in the song, every day of Christmas also gets everything from the preceeding days!