So Close to Sitting With Santa

I decided to dress Alex up and take him over to meet Santa this afternoon. I was fully prepared for a meltdown and expected to come away with another sad face picture (see last year's picture), if we even made it that far. I did my best to prepare Alex. We talked about Santa on the way to the mall. We watched Santa from the second story of the mall as he took pictures with other kids. Then we waited in line talking about how fun it was going to be and practiced our smile. I was surprised that Alex seemed okay with the idea and wasn't saying, "No Santa. No Santa." We made it all the way up to his turn, took two steps towards Santa, and then the anxiety set in! Alex turned his head, wrapped his arms around me, and then the tears started. There was no way he was going near Santa so Santa convinced me to sit down with him too. Mrs. Claus did a decent job of distracting Alex. You can barely even tell that he's crying and I'm strapping his arms down! You can tell from my lovely appearance- maroon sweatshirt (Could anything clash worse with red?!), ponytail, no makeup- that I was not prepared for my Santa photo. Oh well, maybe by next year Alex will be excited to meet Santa.