Living Life One Cheerio at a Time

I've been wrestling. I do it each year at this time. Wrestling with Santa. Do I keep up the pretense or do I tell them that he's not real? Well, this year week, I was overcome with the fact that I needed to stop the charade. We had never done a big deal about Santa. Never did presents from him, or photos or hoopla. Usually, Santa was just they guy we left cookies for on Christmas Eve. Sometimes we left oatmeal or carrots. Whatever was convenient. I was a lazy Santa. We've never done Elf on the Shelf or what have you...again, I'm lazy. Child number one hasn't believed in a few years. She just kept up the pretense. She would say something "Santa related" and wink at me. My little boy is real sensitive to the Spirit. He began questioning. He would say things like: "So Santa and the Holy Spirit do they talk?" "Do the elves work for God, too?" "Is the story of Rudolph real like the story of Jesus?" ...

Well last week we had a visit from the tooth fairy. #1's tooth has been quite wiggly for some time. She would only wiggle with her tongue.She wouldn't touch it or let anyone else. We knew it was coming to the end of its life span when the tooth behind it was coming in rapidly. Well at exactly 3:40 am (yes the middle of the night people) she woke me to tell me her tooth had fallen out. NO blood, NO pain...yea for her. But the questions are how in the world did she not swallow it and why was she playing in the middle of the night with it? At that time of day/night/delirium I was lucky to form thoughts and words. I told her the tooth fairy would not be coming she had already passed our house and that if she went back to sleep she could call her mimis and papas in the (later) am. PS I don't think she went back to sleep because at 6:15 she hopped right out of bed. I held her off until 7 o'clock ish to start calling people. She was so excited to go to sleep that night with h...