Santa (big fat) babies

There are few things as good as an epic Santa pic. I mean, I don't necessarily support the idea of taking a nervous kid and forcing them to sit on a crazy costumed stranger's lap....Wait. Who are we kidding? I totally do.

C'mon. It's Santa. You gotta at least try for the photoshoot, right?

And try we have...

Piper, 2011:
Borrrr-inngggg.



Piper, 2012:
Horrified. Kicking off a shoe horrified.

Piper + Fin, 2013:
Escape, please!

So we don't exactly have the best track record, but it doesn't stop me from attempting to get an adorable pic with my kids on Santa's lap. Even if we have to compromise on "adorable" in favor of "funny in hindsight because they're at least not permanently scarred".

This year I had high hopes for our Santa visit. Fin is a bit more daring than Piper, so I thought she might be up for it, and we had talked Piper through the idea, hoping she'd warm up to the concept if she understood it a bit better. We weren't exactly eager to spend a ton of time on this experiment, so when we found out Santa was visiting a nearby park we figured stopping by might be worth a shot (and would save us the long line and crazy prices of the mall Santa set-up). We bundled up and headed out, chatting the whole way about how friendly Santa is, what he might say, how big and brave Piper is etc. and so on.

We got there...and they spotted him.
One of these people is excited. The others are....suspicious at best. 

We waited our turn to go say talk to the big guy, watching a couple of kids happily sit on his lap. We continued our pep talk to Piper, but when it was our turn...she would have none of it. She agreed to sit next to Santa, and after an unsuccessful attempt to pass Fin off, we gave up and just embraced the opportunity for a family photo.

Not a great family photo, maybe...but it's better than nothing! Santa was friendly and patient, offering up high fives, that were met with....more suspicion.

Piper did eventually warm up to him enough to chat a little. But I think she got so overwhelmed by the situation that she forgot to tell him what she wanted for Christmas. There were some tears about that after the fact, when she worried that Santa didn't know what she wanted and she had missed her opportunity to tell him. We assured her we could write him a letter, or try visiting him again another time. Since then, she's told us she'd like to see him again and try to sit on his lap...but she changed her tune immediately, deciding: "Maybe we could just write him a note."

Sounds good, kiddo. We'll try again next year.

Merry Christmas Eve, Santa babies!

  -------------------------------------

Psssst....Want to get all the Bowdenisms news delivered right to your inbox? 
YES PLEASE! Subscribe via email and never miss an -ism.  xox.