>I’d been looking forward to the Reindeer Festival at our local zoo for about a year, ever since my neighbor told me what a good time her daughter had at it last year. Real reindeer, meeting Santa in his own little “house,” no big mall crowd. Sounded great. Her daughter is a year older than Sebastian, so I’d written it into my Christmas plans for this year and got all excited when December rolled around.
Well, given that Sebastian spent most of Thanksgiving and every subsequent family gathering over our week home shaking his head and saying “no” whenever someone tried to talk to him, I should have known exactly how he would react to Santa.
So here it is. The face says it all.
Ok, so he hated Santa and he didn’t understand why he had to give apples to the reindeer. Apples, Mama! They are for ME!! But he does love going to the zoo and we were happy to support their Christmas efforts.
We got some terrific pictures in a sleigh they have set up for the occasion, but I’m not going to post them yet because we used some of them in our holiday cards. I’ll put them up once the cards have arrived (we’re mailing them today)!
Next I turned my holiday spirit toward decorating the Christmas tree. I thought Sebastian would have a great time looking at the ornaments and “helping” us to put them on the tree this year. Well. First of all, he only wanted to hold the glass (i.e. breakable) ornaments, and then he howled every time we didn’t let him. I informed him that he was making the process something less than merry.
Overall it was fun, though, as I handed an ornament to him, he named it (“ball! cat! tree!”), and then handed it to Daddy to hang. And he LOVED the little truck ornament I found for him at a craft show and had personalized for this year. He asks me to take it off the tree every day so he can “drive” it around the living room. I then happily hang it up each evening and smile to think that we’ll be putting that ornament on the tree together every year and that someday he will take it and hang it on his own tree.
So Santa won’t be a hero until next year perhaps, he doesn’t like the family parties, and he doesn’t really get the idea of presents yet, but…
It’s going to be a merry Christmas nonetheless.
>I love that he is learning about traditions and is creating NEW ones for his parents! The race for Santa's lap will come soon enough; for now it's acceptable that his safe place is in the arms of his daddy or mama. Lucky boy!
>Oh no! Well, at least, the location was enjoyable … imagine that same reaction in a crowded, germ-infested, loud, obnoxious mall!There's always next year, SP 🙂