Santa Watch 2011

We are all about Santa in this house, and have been for a few weeks. We talk about Santa, we pour over catalogs, we talk about going to see Santa, about Santa coming to see us. And one thing I quickly noticed is that Finn wants pretty much every single thing he sees in the catalogs, well, save for the 'girl' pages.

(It is ironic he says this because he will flip past a 'girl' page and on the very next page ask for a hot pink Barbie horse to have as his very own)

So we have been working hard on making sure that he knows that despite his insistence that he needs everything in every catalog that fills up our mailbox he in fact won't get everything.

And now, when anyone asks him what he wants Santa to bring they get a long laundry list of items, generally starting with rescue things, followed by fire engines, ambulances, police cars, whales, sharks, and more rescue things. And then ending with a rescue set with a boat with a big net rescuing a big whale.

The boy is specific if he is anything. Fortunately for us this does, in fact, exist.

He then ends the conversation with 'but Santa doesn't bring me everything!'. Let's hope these words stay fresh in his mind over the next 4 weeks.

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Here in Atlanta there is a popular Santa that is hard to get an appointment with. So hard, in fact, that you start receiving emails in July letting you know that registration for an appointment is coming soon. July. Like, when it is 100 degrees outside and everyone is still celebrating Independence Day.

This year they changed their system and made it more difficult to get a time which meant, for us, we saw Santa this past Thursday. Early-ish November. 70 degrees out, before Thanksgiving, and time to see Santa. It kind of sucked, except at least we got it out of the way before the mall became too crazy. And since this was our fourth year bringing Finn to this Santa, and the first for Lila, well, we knew we couldn't miss it, even if it mean we now have to explain to Finn, every day, that Santa isn't actually coming for a long, long time, or rather a long, long time in a 3.5 year old's world.

We weren't sure how Lila would do since she is pretty much attached to me. She cries if I am in the room and not next to her. She cries if I leave the room and dare to leave her with her dad. She is definitely a mama's girl.

I decided it was best if Lee dropped her off in Santa's arms, and lo and behold she did great. Well, she didn't smile, she looked pretty confused, she kept staring at him as if she couldn't figure out who this crazy man was, but she didn't cry. And Finn had his first year where he actually interacted with Santa and told him everything he wanted.

Whether or not he admitted to Santa that he knows he doesn't bring everything is between the two of them, but my bet is on probably not.

I appreciate all the kind words on my last post. I certainly wasn't expecting the nice compliments I received, from both people I know and people I don't. Thank you all!