First Visit with Santa

Last year, Carder was too young to understand Santa.  He spent a good bit of time in December very sick (including Christmas Day).  Plus, it was our first Christmas in our new city and I completely dropped the ball on getting him to see Santa.

I knew I wanted to have him see Santa this year.   He still has quite a bit of stranger anxiety.  Perhaps it would have been a better idea to try a "breakfast" with Santa type of deal to give him plenty of time to see him from afar (and stare him down while he accessed the situation).  I didn't know how to approach it the best to be able to get him to sit on Santa's lap and get a good picture.

Our first attempt to see Santa was at the Christmas tree lighting downtown on 12/7/12.   Even though we got there early, it was super crowded.  (And people are A-holes.  If you want to see Santa up close and personal, get there early to reserve a spot.  Don't push your way up front and shove in front of other people with kids who got there earlier and then proceed to put your 6 year old on your shoulders blocking the view of my 18 month old.  But I digress...)  The line to see Santa was super long and it was already pushing bedtime as it was.  We skipped on Santa for that night.

 

Before I knew it, it was the middle of December.  While there were several options still available, we decided that we would try the local Santa Shack to see how it went.  Unfortunately, Carder decided to boycott his nap today and was quite cranky* as we made our way downtown.  I wasn't sure to expect. 

 

Thankfully, there was no line to wait in.  Santa was a very nice (but very young) man with an obviously fake beard that probably looked pretty scary to a toddler with stranger anxiety.  He clung to me for dear life.

 

After the inital screams of "NOOOOO" as he got closer to Santa, he finally calmed down a little bit.  I decided to squat down to get a picture of Carder in my arms where Santa would actually be in the picture (because that Santa shack is REALLY small).

As you can clearly see, Carder was not happy with that, either.  He wanted absolutely nothing to do with getting any closer to that strange man in the red suit with the fake beard.

 

In the end, Carder accepted his Candy Cane and gave Santa "5".  Sometimes you take the best you can get.  We determined that we would forgo any other attempts to see Santa this year as this seemed to be enough torture for one holiday season.

 

*  He had also begun coughing a little bit.  It turned out that he was at the beginning of a very nasty cold/virus and probably wasn't feeling too well today.