Santa Pictures

Oh my goodness Santa picture day was somewhat of a disaster this year!  Dustin planned to take the morning off and we were going to do our tradition of going downtown Seattle to Macy's to have Leah's picture with Santa.  I had absolutely no idea how she would react this year. She knows who Santa is now, she sees him in books and stuff and seemed excited about it when we talked about going to see him. OK so first of all, we are getting ready to head out this morning and Leah decided to randomly yank on her stocking which made the heavy holder fall down right on her FACE :-(  She was screaming and I started having a panic attack. Her eye was watering and there were cuts above and below her eye that were bleeding a little. It took her a long time to calm down and trying to put her boo boo ice pack on it only made her more upset.  We eventually decided she was fine and that we would go along with our plans for the day and hoped her eye wouldn't start swelling up on our way :-/. 

SO, we got downtown and there were only a few people in "Santaland" so we didn't have to wait in line which was great.  Leah pointed and smiled when she saw Santa.  When it was her turn, I carried her over to Santa. She immediately clung on to me tight.  This Santa was SO GREAT at talking to Leah and trying to make her not scared. He was showing her his bells and his soft coat and giving her baby doll hugs. He finally got her to smile when he tickled her so I thought, OK, great I will try to set her down next to him. RIGHT when I did that her lip pouted out and big tears started welling up in her eyes and she reached out and grasped on to me. It was so sad. I could tell that Santa didn't want to hold a screaming and flailing toddler and he told me to sit down too and be in the picture. And while I did not want Leah to be terrorized and be screaming on Santa's lap, I am kind of bummed that I ended up being in the picture. I was NOT ready for pictures, I didn't look cute at all and I feel like I ruin the picture. So anyway, here it is......

I guess we will at least always have this story about the year she refused to sit on Santa's lap......

After pictures, we went to ride on the carousel outside of the mall. It is part of our tradition. Usually Leah loves it but I think she was still not recovered from scary Santa :-)

Plus, it was freezing outside!

After that we had lunch with my dad who works a few blocks away.

My dad bought us cookies and Leah wanted an m&m cookie, but she ate off all the m&ms and then gave me back the cookie, haha!

Wow what a morning! We all came home and took a nap!