Santa

We had our first good run-in with Santa yesterday.  Well, the whole process wasn’t perfect, but the final result was.

We headed up to Greenville to get Christmas pictures taken (doing it early this year as to avoid the rush and frustration we had last year.)  Livi was looking cute in her new Christmas dress, and was excited to see Santa.  She had talked about it all weekend and was excited.  We were walking on the second floor of the mall right at opening time and spotted Santa below.  We called her over and the face went from happy to a frown, and she became attached to Brooke’s leg.  We had to bend down to hear the chant that she was saying because it was so soft, we barley made out “I don’t want to see Santa, I don’t want to see Santa.”  We moved along quickly, because pictures were first and we didn’t want her in a bad mood for those.

Pictures went great, and she was a trooper, being posed, and moved in different positions.  From walking in to walking out with our order made took exactly an hour.  Now for the walk to Santa.  We knew that we had to do it fast and that there would be crying, but that is kind of the way it has been so we are used to it.

We arrived at Santa’s area and there was no line, we were next, but Olivia realized where we were and started backing up and crying.  She even went as far as running up to a stranger passing by and walking with them for a second before I caught her.  I calmed her down away from Santa best I could and then walked her backwards into the Santa area.  She knew where we were though and kept her eyes fixed on the corner where he was behind.  I handed her off to Brooke after she gave her normal line to the photographer “We know she will cry, we have a series, just snap the picture and we will buy it.”  Brooke and Lee walked up to Santa and he was such a good Santa that he calmed her down by talking about Disney Princesses.  Olivia realized that this guy may be OK, and agreed to sit on his lap.  Success!!  Not perfect smiles, but calmness at at least.  Santa gave her a cookie afterwards and she hasn’t stopped talking about him since.  Yay, the Santa curse may be broken!!