"I saw Santa!"

Well, Sophie has seen Santa twice in the past week or so.  She is really into the whole Santa thing, too.  We got The Night before Christmas from the library, and she wants to read that every night.  She knows that Christmas is the 25th (and also Baby Jesus' birthday--there are also frequent baby Jesus sightings) and that Santa comes the night before.  She keeps saying, "Santa's not coming tomorrow."

She also says that she's Santa (and I get to be Sophie).  Yesterday we were playing Santa, and I got a little boy & girl toy, put them in a house, and said she could bring them presents.  She thought that was a great idea.  So she got her elephant purse and put all kinds of stuff in there to be her bag of presents and brought them to me and the boys & girls.

One day we were on our way to the lab in medical building.  As we walked down the hall and then through a waiting area for the xray lab, there was a man sitting with his back to us wearing a Santa hat.  He was an older gentleman with a gray beard.  As we approached him, Sophie stopped and just stared at him.  He waved, and we kept going.  A couple of ladies sitting there just laughed and said, "Did you see that little girl stop and look and make sure he wasn't Santa?"  But when we got to the lab, it was clear Sophie had thought it was Santa.  She kept saying "I saw Santa!"  We talked about it, and the story emerged that Santa was at the doctor because he hurt his foot she said.  I suggested one of the reindeers stepped on it.  She thought that sounded like a good story and she was telling us about it for the next couple of days.

Then today we went to a "come meet Santa" day one of the local organizations was having.  Since we saw him before, Sophie just keeps saying he is going to bring her games, but doesn't have any specific ones in mind.  So before we went today, we stopped at ToysRUs to see if there were any she wanted to put on her list.  She picked out a few, but maybe too many.  We talked about them a couple of times in the car on the way there and tried to practice her list.  (some of the kids had typed lists, maybe we'll have to bring one with us next year)

But when we got inside and actually saw Santa sitting in the chair, she got scared and didn't want to go see him after all.  We watched a few other kids and go tell him what they wanted, but she still wasn't having it.  But when I suggested Mommy go with her and she sit on mommy's lap, she agreed to that.  She did tell him she wanted games (you can see her also signing 'games' with two fists in one of the pictures), but she kinda had a moment where she froze up and seemed like she had a moment there where she couldn't say anything. 

"How about a nice ... football?"

But it went well, and we were glad she actually did it and didn't freak out.  And all the way home and most of the rest of the day, she kept saying "I saw Santa!" and "I want to see Santa again."   She called the place we went the North Pole and said we would go back again tomorrow.