Sam’s Story: Week 150

For all the Christians, agnostics, atheists, and unconcerned secularists among us, it’s the Christmas season. That means that you’re going to be seeing a lot of pictures of Sam wearing a Santa hat, because THAT’S THE LAW.

With the new baby due to make its gooey debut literally any moment now, we’ve been trying to get in as many Christmas events and chores as we can. The tree is up, the lights are up, and all my shopping had been done for a week. That latter actually stuns me, as I’m pretty sure it’s never ever happened before and I’m sill not sure how I did it without just buying everyone gum. One other thing we tried to do is to get Sam to visit Santa Claus for that precious photo op. Instead of the mall, though, we took Sam to this “Brunch with Santa” thing at our church. We were late in registering so our place in line to see Santa wasn’t until like 12:45, but we got there, had an awful meal of tepid cheese pizza, and entertained Sam with games of little to no skill. The whole time we could see Santa up on stage, though, and Sam seemed at least somewhat excited at the prospect of sitting on his lap and telling him all about the McQueen Cars toy she wanted.

When they finally called our group, Ger bolted to the front of the line and presented Sam to jolly old Saint Nick. The event organizers had set up a dinky digital camera and were taking and printing pictures of your little one’s encounter with Santa, but I elbowed my way into a good position to take my own. Unfortunately what happened was that as soon as Sam got a good look at this strange, bearded man in a garish red snowsuit she totally froze up, locking her arms around Ger’s neck for dear life and whimpering about “that red man.”

In the meantime I was snapping away, trying to salvage whatever I could. Surprisingly, though, Santa seemed less interested in the whimpering toddler trying her best to get away from him and more interested in giving me the stink eye and growling “No pictures! No pictures!” at me. I heard him, but I just muttered back with “Eat it, you stupid elf. I didn’t pay a $21 cover charge for two slices of pizza and a chance to not take pictures.”

So all I got was this picture, which wasn’t even terror-filled enough to submit to the Scared of Santa gallery. I did get some seriously dirty looks, though, and I wouldn’t be surprised to find reindeer poop on my front porch Christmas morning. At least Sam enjoyed getting some hardcore Christmas tats.

I mentioned last week that Sam has gotten into the habit of getting herself up and letting herself out of her room when she wakes up in the morning. We thought we were used to this change, but Sam proved us wrong the other morning at 6:48 a.m. Ger and I were just lying there, dozing in and out of fuzzy sleep and thinking about how we should really get up. You know, the kind of semi consciousness that amplifies the normally soft and faraway sounds of the waking morning like birds chirping outside, the hot water heater puffing to life, and the occasional neighbor starting up his car. We were just starting slip off for a few more minutes of snoozing when there was a bellowing “HI MOMMY!” like four inches from Ger’s nose.

Geralyn, as she is wont to do when bugs or toddlers take her by surprise, completely spazzed out. She shrieked, jumped a good foot straight up off the mattress, and generally flailed all her extremities. I swear I thought she was going to lift up the sheets to reveal that the baby had popped out. Sam was nonplussed by this reaction, but the next morning she remembered enough of it to stand in the hallway outside our door and whisper “Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!” over and over again until Ger laughed and waved her in. She’s a fast learner, I’ll give her that.