Must be Santa

Instead of waiting on line for three hours at the mall, our neighborhood moms got together and hired a Santa Claus to visit our children at one of the neighbor's homes. And let me tell you, this was no mall Santa. This guy may have been the real deal! Now last year, Christopher was so easy to just hand off to Santa. There was no fuss and we got some great pictures. For the past few weeks, Christopher has been very fussy and overwhelmed in large group situations so when I saw in the evite that there would be 45 people at this event, the dread began. I thought for sure he would be "that kid" that was screaming and fussing the whole time. Once again, my boy proved me wrong. We were at the house for 15 minutes before Santa came in, bells and all. I was holding Chris at the time and he immediately did the "put me down" lean and ran over to Santa, pointing to him and laughing. Later, when we put Chris on the jolly old man's lap, he was a little cautious but as soon as he saw the Hot Wheels car Santa was handing him, they were best friends. And he got a candy cane on top of it! After Santa visited with all the children, he was in the kitchen (possibly grabbing an adult beverage?) and CJ went right up to him and gave him the signal for "pick me up." Can you believe it? Here are some pictures from their visit.


Yesterday, we went to Petsmart to get some items and there was a Santa there who was taking pictures with dogs. As soon as we walked in, Christopher ran directly to the big, furry black dog that was with Santa and started petting him. Then he went right up to Santa and started "petting" his beard. Maybe he thinks Santa's beard is a fluffy white dog? Anyway, that should have been a sign unto me that he would be okay with today's Santa... The rest of the party was so fun and Chris was going up to practically every mom in the kitchen, asking to be picked up (sound familiar Grandpa Woglom?). He was in heaven because this kitchen had three, count 'em, three ovens and a microwave. Wow. To top it all off, his favorite babysitter, Kay, was there to see all the kiddos and we got a picture of the two of them. It was a great afternoon!