Dancing Santa 2012

Wow!  Alyssa, like many other toddlers, gets really excited about seeing new people or things.  Along with those experiences comes her nerves though.  She was so excited to go see the Santa Parade (a parade that welcomes Santa to the local mall) last night so we got ready and made our way to see everything.  The parade was a bit unexciting as it was made up of one group of tap dancer ladies making their way from one end of the mall to the other (Santa was at the end of the mall that the parade ended at and wasn't actually a part of the parade itself we found out).  There were workers passing out jingle bracelets and Alyssa's nerves kicked in as soon as someone offered her one.  She loves the bracelet now of course (starting a whole 5 seconds after the lady walked away).

She was still really excited to go see Santa though so we walked around while the line was long and waited for Papa to make it back from his drill.  We had supper at the food court with Papa and then saw the line was gone for Santa so we headed his way.  Alyssa was very excited, until she rounded the corner and actually saw Santa sitting there.  She turned tail and ran back to the room behind Santa (part of the path that the line winds through normally).  From there she could hear the music from the celebration still and was dancing away.  We were trying to convince her to go talk to Santa but there was no love for the idea anymore.  Thankfully we had waited until the bitter end of the line and no one else was held up by our fickle toddler.

The cameraman was wondering where she had gone so I went back towards the front/Santa and told him she was dancing in the back instead.  Santa stood up from his chair and hopped the little fence and when I got back to the room, he was dancing next to Alyssa (well, until she noticed him anyways!).  Can you say BEST SANTA EVER?!  Over the next 10 minutes with no other kids trying to see Santa, Alyssa was slowly coaxed into being friends with Santa which included a toddler-led tour of Santa's area and I believe two more dance parties.  She never sat on his lap though they shared the chair for a little bit (not long enough or still enough for the pictures).  We did get her to be held by him while standing right at the end and got three pictures during that--one "huh?", one straight faced, and one "Cheese!" with the cheesy smile.

So thrilled to have had that fun night to hopefully make future Santa trips easier.  I only wish I had snapped a cellphone video of them dancing together!

**Note: With my purchase of last night, copyright was transferred to me as the buyer.  So no, I am not violating professional copyright laws by posting this picture.