We took the kids to see Santa last night and it went pretty much just as I suspected.
I really talked up Santa this year. Jackson was all hyped up to go see him. He was really excited and was going to tell him all about what he wanted for Christmas this year. He was even going to tell Santa what Avery wanted because Avery couldn't tell him herself. Ha!
So when we got to the mall and saw Santa down on the first floor, both kids got so excited and took off for the escalator. They couldn't get to him fast enough. So I thought maybe things might go better than I expected.
We always go on a weeknight to avoid the long wait and we've had a lot of success with that. We got down there and there was only one little girl in front of us, which was great, except that she was about Avery's age and she cried the whole time she was on Santa's lap. I'm afraid this may have made both of our kids uneasy about Santa because when it got to be our turn, Avery wouldn't go near him and Jackson decided he was going to be "shy". He wouldn't talk to him or even give him a high five. Jake tried setting him on Santa's lap and Jackson would have no part of it. We even tried hugging Santa ourselves to show the kids that it was okay, but they didn't care. Avery cried when we even got her close to Santa!
So we thought, lets just see how they would do if we were in the picture as well. I sat next to Santa and sat Avery on my lap and she still cried. Jackson did okay as long as he was on his Daddy's lap and the photographer even got a smile out of him at one point. Avery was still very uneasy and though she forgot about him for a brief minute and stopped crying long enough for us to get a picture, she then turned her head and saw him again and then burst into tears! Ha. I'm glad we got a good picture though, even if Jake and I had to be in it this year. Hopefully next year will go a little better.
And here are all of our Santa pictures from 2011-2015!
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