Sorry, Santa...

Call me Scrooge, but I had no intentions of taking Alex to see Santa. I figure, if he's big enough to ASK to see Santa and sit on his lap, we'll go. I don't feel the need to drag him to sit on Santa's lap if he doesn't care, though. I did have intentions of taking him to the Christmas open house at the local John Deere store, though. I knew he'd just love it! Somehow, despite reading the ads in the newspaper, I missed the fact that Santa would be at the open house. But there he was, sitting in his sleigh, being pulled by eight tractors. (Did you expect reindeer?!)

Alex only recognizes Santa because there's a Santa statue about the same size as Alex by the pharmacy counter at CVS. He loves to look at that statue, just staring at it while we wait for our prescriptions. (With the sickies in our house, we've definitely visited that pharmacy enough recently to get Alex very well acquainted with the statue!)

Well, going to the tractor store was a HUGE hit! Alex loved checking out all the tractors - big and small - toy tractors, real tractors, tractor puzzles, tractor shirts. I think it was kind of like DisneyWorld for a tractor-lovin' boy.

Alex had explored the store, sat on real tractors, driven toy tractors, and stared at Santa from afar. We decided we'd offer him a chance to sit with Santa. I picked him up, plopped him down next to Santa, and Alex just truly didn't care. He turned away from Santa (not out of fear) and held out his arms to me, climbed down, and tried to climb onto one of Santa's sleigh-pulling tractors.

So, that was this year's visit with Santa.

After that, we thought maybe Alex would like to go to the cookie-decorating table. Our child never turns down a good cookie. Nope. He saw the cookies, didn't care, and went straight back to the tractors. He played a little more, and then (since Max was fussing) we headed to the car. Poor Alex. He didn't pitch a fit about leaving, but he cried all the way home. Just sobbed. He was sooooo sad to leave his beloved tractors. I guess it's a good thing he's having a tractor birthday party, huh?

I'm thinking maybe we need a tractor sweatshirt for the occasion...Alex sure wouldn't mind a return trip to the John Deere store!