Sitting With "Daddy" Claus

Since we plan on letting the girls know right away that Santa is just fun to pretend, we don't have to worry about them knowing that Santa isn't real! One very nice thing about that is that instead of lugging Kyra to the mall to sit on a stranger's lap who she probably would yell at anyway (or pull his beard knowing her), Phil just put on his Santa suit and she sat on his lap for pictures! She knew immediately that it was her Dad, even though he changed in the other room and then came out to "surprise" her and was not at all upset (in fact, she barely even seemed to notice other than trying a couple times to get ahold of that beard!) She did definitely decide that she was not going to kiss him with all that fuzzy, curly stuff on his face.
She also got to open her very first Christmas present while she was sitting in his lap to help keep her occupied long enough for Mama to get a bunch of pictures. (Technically, her first Christmas present was the wagon that Gramma Susan and Papa got her when they were here, but she didn't actually OPEN that one.) She had lots of fun opening it, even if we didn't let her eat the paper and was quite impressed with the Elmo inside. The next time she was on the floor crawling around, about five minutes later, she made a beeline for the first present she saw. It sure didn't take her long to get that figured out! Luckily I wrapped all hers in the same paper, so hopefully she'll be able to tell which ones are NOT for her too.