Next year Santa will be bringing her to therapy

Here I am finally getting around to writing about Christmas.  Before I really get into our Christmas morning story I need to tell you how we spent our Christmas Eve.  But before I get around to telling you about Christmas Eve I have to admit that my expectations about this holiday were probably a little high.  This was the first year Autumn was mature enough to exhibit some Christmas spirit and it was a real treat to see her get excited at the prospect of a visit from Santa.  Alas, as often happens when you’re dealing with a three year-old, things did not quite go as I had hoped.

For weeks I had been telling Autumn we would be making cookies for Santa to set out with some milk before she went to bed on Christmas Eve.  I went the semi-homeade route and bought a pouch of Betty Crocker sugar cookie mix because I knew I’d have very little time to make the dough from scratch.  It turns out I had even less time than I figured because I wound up making the cookies at my grandma’s house while we were over for dinner that night.  My grandma very graciously let me use her oven, which apparently she uses mostly for storage now, but I wound up making the cookies by myself.  It turns out I cannot compete with Tom Hanks and his Polar Express even when cookies are involved.

Around 8-ish Nathan and I brought Autumn home.  We helped her put out the cookies and milk for Santa,  tucked her into bed and proceeded to assemble the magic that would be the next morning.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, Autumn had fallen in love with a particular remote-controlled dinosaur she had seen at Target.  Mom and dad, being the suckers they are, purchased the dinosaur through Amazon and had assembled him earlier in the week.

Wrapping something that large was a big pain in the patootie.  It took at least 45 minutes and a whole roll of wrapping paper to cover the entire box we had put him in.  Though Nathan assured me Autumn wouldn’t notice if Santa’s wrapping job was a little shoddy, I insisted on covering all the visible surfaces of the box.  You will soon see why that was a huge waste of my time.

Nathan ate the sugar cookies and drank the milk.  He made sure to leave some crumbs behind and I wrote a note to Autumn from Santa thanking her for the treats (and included a request for her to be good for her parents throughout the next year).

The next morning she ran into our bedroom and while I can describe what transpired after that, it would probably be best to share the video because nothing says Christmas like the cries of a child terrified of the gift Santa left for her.

She’s okay until about 2 minutes and 30 seconds in and then she really starts wigging out.  Not the reaction we expected, though I should have known a child afraid of the pine cones that fall from the trees in our yard might be just a little scared of a walking, roaring dinosaur that lights up.

While Autumn has yet to play with the thing herself, she has warmed up to him considerably.  She now tolerates his presence in the same room with  her as long as he’s turned off.  We’ve even caught her talking to him a couple of times so maybe this is just a phase.  Still, I think Santa is going to approach any requests from the girl with a little more caution next Christmas.