Santa

This afternoon I decided to take the kids to the mall to see Santa. Julia flat out refused to sit on his lap last year. At Easter, she liked to watch the Easter Bunny from afar, but once again refused to get anywhere close to him. So I was not sure how well Santa would co over this year. Julia is MUCH less shy than she used to be, so I was hoping that maybe it would work.

So the entire drive to the mall I talked to her about how we were going to see Santa Claus and how you sit on his lap and tell him what you want for Christmas. Julia always does better at things when you explain them ahead of time. So by the time we got to the mall she was really excited to go see Santa. But as we got close and she could see him, I could see her start to tense up slightly. I could tell she still was not sure about this. There was not a line, so we walked up. She walked into the Santa area just find but once we could about 3 feet from Santa she turned and clung to my leg. I tried to explain to her that it was okay and she needed to sit on his lap so she could tell him what she wanted for Christmas. She was not freaked out like normal, but she was definitely frightened. I pick up Jude and put him on Santa's lap to show her that it was fine. She still was not completely buying it. I finally just picked her up and sat her on his lap. She did not scream and struggle to get off, so I took that as a good sign. But she did pout and try to hide her face. I told her I was going to tickle her if she did not smile and that got her giggling. The "elf" who was taking the pictures picked up on that and used hand puppets to make Julia smile. I was shocked, we actually got a good picture of Julia smiling on Santa's lap!! She was still a little too shy to tell him what she wanted for Christmas, so I helped her off his lap and thought she did a wonderful enough job. Santa then gave her a coloring book and that got her all excited.

Jude, on the other hand, could have cared less about the whole thing! He is so easy going!!

The funniest part about the whole thing was that the "elf" was using a Dora hand puppet trying to get Julia to smile. She was asking Julia who that was, etc.. I finally had to tell the elf that Julia has no clue who Dora is because we don't watch that show. The elf then pulled out an Elmo puppet and asked if we know him. I said yes and Elmo got some giggles out of Julia.

Oh, our printer/scanner is broke, otherwise I would have scanned in the picture and posted it here. It is actually a really great picture!