The girls love to visit Santa. At 7 years old, A still believes in Santa, and is content with my explanation that the various "Santas" we see in public are really just "Senior Elves" in training to take Santa's place when he retires. She also knows that we'd never want to mention that we know this, for the Elves would be disappointed that we didn't believe, and the younger kids would be confused.
This is the first Santa we encountered for the season: Jultomten the Swedish Santa at our local IKEA store. K just would not sit up straight, she insisted on reclining on him, so her blue pants look unusually large on her. The sweater K is wearing was handknit in Norway for me when I was I child, but I refused to wear it (scratchy wool), so my mom stuffed it in a drawer and forgot about it. It has some moth holes now but is otherwise perfect, and K is happy to wear it with a soft cotton turtleneck underneath. When the girls met Jultomten they weren't prepared and didn't know what to ask him for Christmas. I think they were also confused, concerned that he might not understand English because he was the Swedish Santa. The girls were virtually silent. Maybe it was good that they couldn't think of anything they wanted. Or maybe it was a sign that Mommy already buys them way too many toys!
Our next visit to Santa was at a mall. I don't know what possessed me, but we went to the mall on a Friday evening and after circling for 15 minutes to find a parking place, we then waited 25 minutes in line for Santa. The girls were happy enough to chat with the other kids in line and look at the props of "Santa's Workshop" that lead up to the sleigh where Santa sat. I love that this mall always has "real beard" santas, and they are genuinely friendly and enthusiastic to see the kids.
This time the girls had plenty of time to think of what they wanted from Santa for Christmas. A rattled off a long list of everything she'd seen advertised recently -- little pony this, and polly pocket that, and DVD's of this, and computer games of that... K on the other hand, asked for another monkey for her collection, and a glass of milk. What? Later I asked her why she wanted milk from Santa, and she said: "I like milk, and we always have cookies." I reminded her that we always have milk in our fridge, but she said she wanted some from Santa anyway.
After seeing Santa we wandered around the mall a bit. The girls always enjoy riding the escalators and seeing the mannekins at Nordstrom.
But little K was getting tired. Can you tell by her expression?
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