Today was one of those momentous days that rolls around every year at about this time - Santa photo time!
Every year thousands of screaming toddlers and babies are dragged by their parents down to the local shopping centre and sat on some elderly stranger’s knee to be photographed. Today it was the turn of our toddler and baby, Little Miss and Usurper.
Of course Wife being Wife the local shopping centre Santa wasn’t up to scratch, something to do with his belly not being round and firm enough, or his ‘HO HO HO’ not quite being jolly enough, or some such thing, so the whole tribe had to go for a 45 minute drive to the shopping centre near the in-laws.
The Santa there was firm of belly, fluffy of whisker, with a lovely baritone laugh and just the right twinkle in his eye - more to Wifes liking when it comes to shopping centre Santa’s to be part of our Christmas photo tradition.
Patiently we waited our turn as we valiantly tried to keep Little Miss from messing up her party outfit by throwing herself to the ground in mid tantrum and stop Usurper from vomiting all over her third outfit of the day. Neither task was easy, but through sheer determination and a combination of bribes and hollow promises we managed to keep the whole mission on track until it was our turn.
From there the professional Elves took over, grabbed the kids, placed them discreetly, snapped a shot, and 30 seconds later we were handed them back. Another couple of minutes and we had our copy of the traditional photo with Santa.
Having a look at it now it isn’t that bad at all. Well, apart from the fact that Usurper is looking off to the the right with her head turned towards where her mother is standing. She is smiling (or has wind - I can never tell the difference), and is clear of vomit, however I have just noticed that she is in fact wearing her bib, which was placed on her to try and keep the spew off her top!
Little Miss is looking off to the left (probably at a cake store), is sitting as far away from Santa as you can get and while actually smiling and looking lovely in her outfit you can clearly see all the bumps and bruises of a weekend spent playing ‘Dora the Explorer’ in the back yard.
Santa I must say does look pretty authentic (although I think he has his eyes closed), so maybe Wives insistence of driving across the city to this particular shopping centre wasn’t as foolish as I first thought.
All in all, this is a pretty good Santa photo despite all the flaws, simply because for the first year there were no tears at all, not before, not during and not after. An early Christmas present for Daddy.
Your bravery of taking your young children to see Santa has encouraged me to try it. Although, truth be told, my kids prefer Rudolf, the Red Nosed Reindeer. I wonder of I can find an authentic Santa with a Reindeer in tow.
We have saved ourselves by not exposing our boys to such frenzies at this holiday season. Maybe next year I’ll get Daddy to set up a christmas tree…
For us, Christmas is more religious and spiritual, but we have a lot of other cultural festivity that demands more of us.
Sounds like a very painless Santa photo! Our first one, 2 years ago when BJ was 11 months, has a very stunned looking BJ staring straight down the barrel of the camera…about 3 seconds before he burst into tears. Last years has Santa holding 4mth-old Toby, squashed in between me with BJ and Daddy on the other side, as BJ refused to let us move more than 4 inches away from him!
I think it would be VERY interesting if the highly strung Little Mis ever came across a real reindeer lol
Moomykin, dodging Christmas may be the smartest move parents can make.
Anne, I won’t mention that this was our second run in with Santa this holiday season with the first leading to us having to remove a sobbing, heaving, toddler from the shopping centre completely!.
Your photos from last year reminded me of ours from last year - where Nanny’s arm can clearly be seen coming from off camera to hold the toddler in place while the toddler is trying to claw her way to freedom.
(loved your site by the way - will be back from a proper read tomorrow)
Aw, man! I love pictures of kids with Santa because the kids usually look terrified. I shouldn’t love that. I love that.