I have been reading Larkin stories about Santa. We have been watching movies about Santa. We even looked up pictures of Santa online and talked all about him in preparation for the big day this year when Larkin would get to go sit on Santa's lap. I know it can be intimidating, and I wanted her to know what was happening.
By the time we loaded up in the car to go see the man in red she could say, "ho ho ho" "snata" (and no, that isn't a typo), "lap" "cheese", and "hello" whenever I would ask her where we were going ... (I told her we were going to go say hello to Santa, sit on his lap and take a picture)
We waited in line for almost two hours to see Santa. I just couldn't understand what was taking so long. The line was longish, but not too long. After about 45 minutes I started to feel like we had already invested so much time, we had to stick it out. As we got closer to the front I started seeing the problem. Santa's little helpers were creepy! And they were so unorganized! They were running all over and yelling loudly at the kids (Festive, photo-related words, but still...). They were letting parents look at every single picture taken ... it was chaos!
When it was our turn I set Larkin on Santa's lap and told her we were going to take a picture. The next 90 seconds were chaos as Santa was primping her, the "elves" were shouting jolly something-or-others at her, Scot and I were trying to get her to smile, and a creepy puppet was tossed all over in front of her.
We got this ...
... it was actually very sweet. I asked Larkin to try and find her happy face and she tried so hard to be brave, but she was genuinely freaked out by the crazy atmosphere. Santa gave her a candy cane and she left with her happy face. She talked fondly about Santa all night after having her picture taken, so it couldn't have been too traumatic.
Everyone has at least one freak-out picture with the jolly old soul, and now Larkin has hers!
Maybe I'm a mean mom, but I think it's kind of sweet!
