Santa!

We took the kids to see Santa early this year so that we could have pictures to give to family and friends. I geared Karyssa up for quite a while, since she has issues with mascots, and she ended up doing brilliantly!

This year, we started listening to songs and reading books about Santa Claus very early, to try to get them excited.  I also keep their first Santa picture up year-round.  Mostly because they are so adorable, but also so that they can see themselves with their "friend" Santa.  If they see pictures of themselves with him, they know him, so it's ok to go to him.  That concept worked well last year, but I was still a little worried this year. 

When I first started talking about sitting on Santa's lap, she was not too thrilled with the idea.  "I don't want to sit on Santa's lap," was all I heard for a while.  Then, I decided to do something awful...I lied to my daughter.  I told her if she didn't sit on Santa's lap, she couldn't tell him what she wanted and she wouldn't get anything for Christmas.  I told her that Kyran would get what he asked for, though.  I don't feel too badly about this, because it seemed to work very quickly, and I don't think she has had any permanent damage. 

Immediately, she became excited about seeing her old friend, Santa, and I started asking them what they wanted.  Their reply: "A Christmas tree!".  We tried to introduce other concepts to them, but they were set in wanting a Christmas tree.  Since we saw Santa in November this year, ours wasn't up yet, and we figured that would be an easy request for Santa to fill.  At some point, they did change their request to a pink Christmas tree (Karyssa), and a blue Christmas tree (Kyran), but sure enough, they did sit on Santa's lap and ask him for a Christmas tree.  We decided Santa either thought we had very sweet kids, or that we were very broke!

They did so well, sitting on his lap for about 10 minutes to get three great poses.  Here they are!