The Santa Experiment

The Boy is now 7 1/2 months old and we felt it was fitting that he have his first visit to Santa.  I’d done it, my husband had done it.  It’s like a childhood right of passage to sit on Santa’s knee and scream and cry while your parents jump and sing and clap and look like downright fools to get you to take one good picture. 

We had heard horror stories about the line-up for the “good” Santa at a mall near us (good= real beard, real chubby belly, real twinkle in the eye).  Most people I knew waited about 2 hours to see Santa, and I KNEW The Boy was not going to put up with that.  Because there would be other kids and grown-ups around to entertain him, and because he now feeds himself snacks (well, it’s more like jams as many stars into his mouth as he can before you take them away from him), we figured we could get a happy 45 minutes out of him before he would start to get miserable about being stuck in a line-up.

We made it to the mall before the 10am Santa arrival and were lucky enough to only have a handful of people in line before us.  Plenty of bleary-eyed parents trying to amuse their children.  Plenty of toddlers running around trying to drive their parents mad!  One especially cute toddler had taken his mom’s Visa and was “swiping” it on anything he could find.  Teach ’em young, right?

As the moment arrived for The Boy to sit on Santa’s knee, we actually felt nervous.  Almost every child in front of him had cried.  There were three children behind us in line that were already crying and they hadn’t been on his knee yet.  We kept reminding ourselves that it was “just for the experience…just for the experience”.

      So, to all of you, from me and my Santa-loving boy, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!