taaa-daaa!!

There's a long story behind this, so hang on. In mid-November Reese and I were at the mall with Grammy and Aunt Nookie and we saw Santa. Reese adamantly refused to sit on his lap or even go near him or give him a high five and I think I still have claw marks on my back where she was clinging to me. Since then she has talked a lot about Santa and how he says "ho ho ho" and how he brings "TOYS!!"and how he's going to bring "A bike and a hat (bike helmet) for Reesey! And trains!" This is a common theme of conversation in our house and one that is generally brought up by her...not me. I figured we'd see Santa at our town's tree lighting and we'd get a picture then, so last week on Sunday when we thought the tree lighting was going to be, we started prepping her. And she got really excited. And agreed to sit with him and say cheese so mommy could take a pic. Yay! Awesome!! Except, we messed up the dates and at 8pm when we finally conceeded that Santa wasn't coming to light the town tree (which is across the street from us so we were carefully watching out the window), little miss Reesey became distressed and wouldn't go to bed. I promised her that if she went to bed, we'd go see Santa the next day thinking that by then she'd be over it. The next morning at exactly 6am she woke up and when I went in her room, her first words were "See Santa?" Seriously? Ok, let's go see him. So we get in the car and drive all the way to the mall and the whole time we're talking about it and she's very agreeable to this. And then we get there and she sees him and the claws come out again and I'm practically choking to death b/c she has climbed up and is clinging to my neck for dear life. Ok, this is not going to happen. What was I thinking? We meander over to the toy store to goof off for a while and she finds a doll stroller that she really likes and is pushing it all over the store and saying "I have it? I have stroller?" and I sieze the opportunity! I say "Maybe you should go ask Santa for a doll stroller." and she responds with.....drumroll please...."ok". So we walk back and there's nobody there so we sit right on down next to the nice Santa with Reese on my lap and he asks her what she wants for Christmas and she says in a teeny tiny voice "trains". He asks if she likes Thomas and that just sets her off. She's jabbering away about Thomas and telling him all about the trains she likes and as she's blabbing away, I discreetly slide her off my lap and onto his and the picture above is the result. I have named it "Denial and Avoidance" after two of my favorite coping skills to confront at work that I believe Reese is doing a good job of displaying. The next picture after this one was of her squirming off his lap and then she was back up in my arms in no time flat. The nice Santa (he really was very nice) handed her a coloring book, she asked him where the pens were (she's such a pip!), and then we started to walk away. And you know that scene in A Christmas Story where the kid forgets to tell Santa about the Red Rider Beebee gun and then at the last minute remembers? We had that moment. As I was walking out of the nice Santa's little spot, Reese turns to him and yells out, "Santa!! A bike and a hat!! A bike and a hat for Reesey!!" And the nice Santa says "Of course, Reese. A bike and a hat for Reesey." She was so happy, she did the wiggle dance all the way back to the car.