I just get such a great feeling at this time of year, which shouldn't begin for at least another week, but I don't care! And, this year I have a baby, so I have license to feel like a kid again myself.
We live close to one of the best malls in the country, and today we went there to meet Jamie's brother Ryan at the Cheesecake Factory for lunch. (Our neighbors gave us a $50 giftcard for letting thier dog out recently. Remind me never to ask them to keep an eye on Brenna for a minute... I'll owe them a Four Seasons gift certificate for the precedent they have now set!)
Well, in typical fashion, the Cheesecake Factory had an hour wait, so we decided instead to go to my favorite place, California Pizza Kitchen. It was Brenna's first trip to a restaurant other than Mack-n-Manco's Pizza at the Jersey shore when she was only one-month-old. She just slept at the shore, but this time she happily sat with us and took in the sights.
After lunch, we shopped. Actually, we really just talked about things we'd rather buy at Target, played with gadgets in Brookstone, aimlessly roamed the too-expensive baby stores, and visited the Bloomingdale bathrooms for a half hour to change Brenna's diaper, get her situated in the baby carrier, and talk to the strangers that talk to us now because we have a baby and they have 35-year-old babies, so we have something in common :) (I'm kidding, I actually enjoy meeting these strangers, but the whole concept of talking to me now that I have a baby is so new, I'm still not used to it!)
And then it happened. As we were contemplating leaving, we saw the big man himself - Santa Claus.
We were on our way out, but I begged Jamie to please let us visit Santa first. Because it is so early in the season, there was no line. It was perfect.
When Brenna sat on Santa's lap, she just looked up at him. She was fascinated! She wasn't scared at all. I guess when you are almost six months, every day is a new adventure, so there is nothing alarming about a large, jolly fat man dressed in red with a white beard.
She had such an innocent curiousity, though, that shoppers actually stopped in front of the Santa display to point at Brenna and Santa. The line that was slowly forming to get their pictures behind us was full of smiling, laughing people that thought this baby meeting Santa for the first time was adorable.
Santa told Brenna that she just had the bluest eyes and that her Mommy and Daddy loved her very much. I think he was having trouble thinking of things to say to a baby that could not talk back on his second day on the job. But, regardless, he was a great Santa!
What a racket the mall has going, though. They don't allow you to photograph the cute event yourself, and the "packages" for the crappy pictures they take are insane, but we bought the cheapest one they had (which wasn't cheap for what it was) and scanned it in....ugly border and all:
It was a great day. And, as of this weekend, Christmas Season has officially begun in our house!
No comments:
Post a Comment