What do you call people who are afraid of Santa?

Claustrophobic :)

What's something every parent teaches their kids? Never talk to strangers (and never take candy from strangers, but do they really do that??)...except when they are wearing a Santa suit! No wonder so many kids freak out about sitting on Santa's lap for the obligatory Santa picture each year. We hammer into their little impressionable brains how bad strangers are, but then force them to sit on a strange man's lap and even use the candy he gives out to bribe them. I guess when it comes to Santa, all bets are off. We lie to our kids, we ask them to go against what we've taught them, we even sometimes walk away happily with a picture of our child screaming. Would we pay for a school picture of our child screaming? Probably not. And so this leads to the progression of Santa pictures we have since Carly was born.

The first year she was just over a year old. She looked at Santa like he had five eyes and three noses, but she didn't cry. (I'm still searching for the cd it's on...)

The next year, she was perfectly happy looking at him, walking around him, and even talking to him, but as soon as she got on his lap, meltdown! This picture was after he patiently let us take an hour trying and letting other people go.

(Notice how in the first two, Santa still does his nice smiling pose. For the third, I think he just gave up.)

This year, we almost didn't go. Andrew isn't a fan of the screaming children pictures and Carly has gotten to where she'll focus on something that scares her and dwell on it for days. Not a good combination for Santa....she even told me she'd cry if I took her. However, friends and family guilt tripped convinced me that I could NOT miss Taylor's first Christmas with Santa. So I told Carly it was her choice about sitting with Santa but Taylor would be having her picture with him...why not, Taylor is such a happy baby?! We went this morning, Carly said she still didn't want to have her picture, and Taylor protested being woken up to be passed to some bearded man she'd never seen before by arching her back and crying. (did I mention the "happy baby" reasoning?) Insert paci, problem solved. Then Carly catches on that Santa's giving kids suckers after their pictures, so I asked if maybe she'd want to stand by Santa and not sit in his lap.....and voila! We actually came home with a Santa picture with no tears and both girls. Woohoo!!