Santa Returns

My company has a family Santa event every December, and tonight was Ian's third time going. The first year he was blissfully ignorant. Last year he was terrified. This year he was still scared, but better able to express it verbally. He was happy about the idea of going to the party to see Santa, and happy to watch from a distance, but very clear that he didn't want to get too close. Next year we expect that he'll feel differently.

This was another Madeline night, so we brought her along. The sweetest part of the evening was on the way there. We picked Madeline up at her house, and she was very sad to see her Daddy walk away from the car and return to the house. She sobbed for the first several minutes of the trip. Meanwhile, in the back seat, Ian did his best to comfort her. "It's Santa time Madeline! . . . You can hold my hand . . . It's okay Madeline, after we go to the party and see Santa we will come home to your house and you will see your Daddy again . . . Look, Madeline, I can reach the handle!" It was very sweet. Madeline recovered and by the time we got to BD they were ready to explore the corporate world, hand-in-hand. Long shiny hallways are fun!:



Since we knew he didn't want to see Santa up close, we thought we could get some photos on the sled instead. Madeline loved it, but it was too close to Santa for Ian's liking:



While Santa was taking a break, we took our chance to get a picture with the tree and Ian met the snowman:





Then we took a long walk down the hallways (very fun for the kids due to ramps, stairs, and other features), to find a highly, highly decorated tree in a remote corner of the building: