Sunday, December 03, 2006

Trauma Claus

I'll bet you can guess where this is going.

Here is a brief history of Harper's visits to Santa:

December 2004


Even though Harper appeared to be waving in that first Santa photo, she was about six weeks old and I'm pretty sure she was mostly asleep.

December 2005



A year older and wiser, Harper was clearly awake and not interested in talking with Santa last year.

Which brings us to yesterday. Now we dove head-long into this holiday season. We've been singing carols, watching Christmas movies, reading Christmas stories. . .And Harper will tell you that Santa comes down the chimney and brings presents. Having so recently celebrated her birthday she is 100% clear on what presents are. I was hoping she would be excited to see Santa.

So here we have a series of photos which sum things up pretty nicely:

December 2006




We tried to get Harper to tell Santa, "Merry Christmas," and talk about presents. The sad thing was, when we tried to leave the Santa area, she cried more, saying, "I want presents!" She thought she would get some then and was upset because she hadn't. Oops. Not our finest parenting hour.

She did get a little paperback Christmas book. When we read it later she said, "Santa gave dat to me!" So she doesn't appear to be scarred for life. Still, we may have to tone down the talk about Santa coming to our house for a couple of days.

1 comment:

Erin said...

Hilarious. You know what really gets me though? The COST of sitting on Santa's lap. what the heck is up with that? Has the world LOST IT'S MIND? The malls around here charge no less than $8 to sit your kid on Santa's lap because you HAVE to buy the photo. No photos with your own camera, must buy crummy professional photo.

Is there anything that says "Christmas" like gouging money out of young parents for the sake of nostalgia?

On the other hand, I love your Santa pics and they just might make me take Cal to the mall and fork over some cash.