Santa was trying to be creative....

Christmas this year was a lot of fun. Catherine really seemed to be "getting" the concept of everything. She was excited about Santa coming and had learned some Christmas songs at school. I was worried that she would wake up at the crack of dawn to open presents but she didn't. She came down the stairs and went to the tree and got a huge smile on her face when she saw all of the presents there. She unwrapped her first present and said "I didn't order this!".

Santa must have a timeshare in Massachusetts...

When I was a kid there was such a mystery surrounding Santa Claus. He was this wonderful little character that only appeared when you were sleeping. Perhaps he was at the mall – but I did not have a mall nearby when I was a kid. I remember my father once dressed up as Santa on Christmas Eve and my mother woke us up to watch him walk down the road. We would listen to our radio on Christmas Eve as they reported where Santa’s sleigh had last been sighted.

My, how things have changed! It’s pretty hard to go anywhere in the month of December without seeing Santa Claus. (Sometimes even in November!) How can we even keep telling kids that he lives in the North Pole? Who would believe that? We have seen Santa at the following locations:

As we were driving to a Christmas party we saw Santa parachuting down from the sky to a party at the fire department in Dracut. Santa then appeared rather quickly at a party in Pelham. We saw Santa this past weekend at “tea with Mrs. Claus”. I had already explained to Catherine that Santa wouldn’t be there since he was so busy packing his sleigh. But there he was….. Santa will be at the kid’s school on Monday and then at my Christmas party on Tuesday. Most of these Santa’s don’t even look close to being real.

Santa also has to hand out presents at each of these events. What ever happened to waiting until Christmas morning? The kids are basically getting a present every weekend in December. I will tell you – it’s very difficult to reign them in after the holidays. Wouldn’t you be upset if all of a sudden you stopped receiving presents every day??

I miss the way Christmas used to be. We’d wait all year for the Christmas shows to be on ONE time. We’d try very hard to be good (for at least a couple of weeks) because Santa might bring Coal for our stockings. (No kid is buying that anymore). We were very excited to open one gift on Christmas Eve (which was always Christmas pajamas – a tradition that I’m keeping for the kids). And, Santa only visited on Christmas Eve…..

Is it just me?

Okay, I'm not a perfect mother but I'm also not STUPID! I had an interesting request this weekend. I was shocked because this was not the first time - it was the second time someone has asked me to do this.

The first time was last winter. We took Catherine to see Finding Nemo on Ice at the Boston Garden in Boston. We bought the super-duper expensive "VIP" tickets and ended up being right down on the ice. We were sitting next to a woman and her little boy. He appeared to be about three years old. She was trying to get her son to talk to Catherine, who of course was having none of it! After about 10 minutes she turned to me and said "I'm going to get some popcorn and he doesn't want to come. Can you watch him while I'm gone?". Seriously?? I do not know this woman. She does not know me and now I've been put in charge of babysitting for her. Being that we were in the super-duper expensive seats, she had to walk all the way up to the top of the section to get out to the food consessions. This took quite a while and I began to worry that she dumped him. He was cute enough but we had our hands full already and I didn't really know what to do with a boy anyway.

The second time was on Sunday. We took the girls to have "Tea with Mrs. Claus" at Smolak Farms in North Andover. The kids all sat at the long table and wrote letters to Santa and decorated gingerbread cookies. There was a little girl and a little boy (again about three years old) that was sitting next to Catherine. They were there with their father. We never spoke to each other at all. I was getting Catherine ready to leave because she was not interested in sitting on Mrs. Claus' lap. The father turned to me and said "I have to take my daughter to the bathroom. Can you watch my son for a minute?"

Am I crazy? Is this acceptable?? Because, I do not think it is. I told Bill all about this episode, looking for signs that he thought this was something he might do in that scenario. He passed with flying colors when he was just as shocked. Maybe I need to give myself more credit. I may forget to bring extra diapers sometimes but I have never asked a stranger to babysit my kids!

Scenes from a 5 year olds Birthday party

Boy 1: "fruit punch makes you STRONG!"

Boy 2: "I know, because it has fruit in it"