Trauma

Well...my youngest child has been traumatized...yet again.
Quite frankly, I don't blame her.
Addie has issues with Santa.
She has been so traumatized by the sight of this man that if she sees a Santa in a particular place...oh, lets say, at school in a room that she has to pass by each and every day...
then for the next month, she looks in terror into that room to make sure that he hasn't magically reappeared.
It has always been this way and I understand.
Santa falls into the same category as evil scarecrows and clowns.

Today was - not fun.

We are not entirely sure what is going on with Addie-pa-tattie, but our day was plagued with nerve splitting moments.

We began our day with visitation for a coworker/friend of Chris's who passed away, followed by a birthday party, followed by lunch and enormous tantrums, followed by a nap on the way to the art show (by the way, people at art shows don't care for children who fuss, just like people at church don't care for children who fuss), more tantrums and crying, a trip that we had to make to a local store - more crying, followed by a lovely car ride home that resulted in a very messy dinner, a Santa drive-by resulting in a complete come apart and then thankfully...bedtime.

It was just lovely.
We were just finishing dinner when we heard Santa coming and ran to the front door just in time for Santa to stop right in front of our house!
We opened the glass door to say hello and that is when Addie froze in my arms.
After a few pleasantries, Santa moved on and Addie watched as he went past...but since there was nowhere for Santa to go because we live on a dead end street, Santa's sleigh had to turn around in the driveway adjacent to our house and that is when it happened....
the terror, the screaming and crying and the begging for me to close the door and run.
She didn't know why Santa was coming back and she certainly had no desire to find out.
Tis the season...

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