My son turned three this year and adapted quite the personality. He loves to tell stories, play fight and throw fits over absolutely nothing. He has been excited for Christmas ever since his birthday in August and for the first time he understands that Santa Clause it not just a big scary man with a beard and a red suit. This year he knows that Santa is actually the man who delivers presents to good children around the world. He visited the jolly old elf four times before the big day arrived. Each time he had the exact same conversation:
“I want a batma
n gun for Christmas.”
Santa would respond, “A batman toy?”
“NO – A batman GUN!”
“A batman toy?”
“I said I wanted a batman GUN”
And he repeated the dialog to me after every visit. Lucky for us my sister gave him a foam dart gun that looked enough like the elusive batman gun to satisfy his true heart’s desire.
But he had no idea what to expect from Santa on Christmas. Christmas Eve we read the ‘Night Before Christmas’ and put out cookies and milk. Because we are such a ‘modern family’ we checked on Santa’s progress via the Santatracker app. I then explained to him that Santa would skip our house if he was not sleeping. You have never seen a child run to bed so quickly. The look of panic in his eyes was priceless. He did not want to read a book. He did not want to be tucked in. He did not want goodnight kisses. He just wanted to get to bed as quickly as possible to ensure that St. Nick would not leave him out.
On Chr
istmas morning he snuck into our room and crawled into bed with us. He told me I needed to go to sleep so Santa would come. I pointed out that it was daylight he may have already visited our house. So he checked the roof for any signs of reindeer. Nothing. We snuck downstairs and saw a room filled with presents. He raced around with excitement waking everyone in the house. My one-year-old daughter soon joined the fun but her reaction was not even close to the delight of a 3-year-old. That was simply magic. This year has been a particularly difficult one for our family but Christmas reminded me how lucky we really are.