Riley and Avery

So Rudi has been taking Riley and Avery to storytime at the library every Wednesday evening when I'm at school. Recently she's learned a lot of holiday-themed finger-plays, which is fine by me. But she's also been learning a lot more about Santa than I feel comfortable with. I don't know for sure if she learned it at storytime, but I know that she's not learning it in school, but perhaps she's learning it from kids at school...Anyway, she's all over baking cookies for Santa and leaving carrots for the reindeer. And I've never been comfortable with the idea of asking Santa for anything. It just rubs me the wrong way, it's greedy. Especially since we've already finished gift-buying for Riley, so what if she asks for something we didn't get her? I'm fine letting Riley determine what she wants to believe in, and if she choses to believe in Santa that's fine with me. But now all she talks about is Santa, and what cookies we are going to leave for him, if we have carrots for the reindeer, she's writing "letters" to Santa, and even wrote him an invitation to her birthday party. It's going way too far. I don't feel comfortable actively deceiving her. I'm at a totally loss at what to do. How do I explain to her that Santa isn't going to come to her birthday party? I have never taught her a thing about Santa because I wasn't sure if we would do the Santa thing, but she's picked it up like the plague.

These pictures are from Walmart's holiday party. Riley got her present from Santa, then sat on his lap, then went back because she forgot to "read" him her list, then went back because she forgot to invite him to her birthday party, she wanted to go back to tell Santa about her canker sore (but we dissuaded her that time), then she went back to give him a hug and a kiss, then she went back to say goodbye, then she went back to give him her cheesy smile. Before we went there, Riley kept asking if it was going to be the real Santa or a fake Santa, and I didn't want to go there, so I put the question back onto her. Then she said "I know how we can tell if he's fake. If he can't even stand up, then he's fake." And it dawned on me that the fact that someone would pretend to be Santa never occurred to her. She thought it would be a Santa that wasn't even a person.

Avery was horrified of Santa (and she said earlier that she was going to ask him for a Care Bear) she clung to be saying "scared! Scared! Home! Home!" Poor little thing.

By the way, Avery can count! I didn't hear the whole series, because I was just happening by when I heard her. She was pulling pencils out of the pencil cup and putting them in her hand. I heard her say "five, six, seven, eight" then she stopped because she noticed I was watching. Smart girl! I'm sure she learned that from Riley because Riley is a number-oriented person, for sure. I don't know what number she started with or how far she could have gone, but that was a surprise!

I have snow pictures, but I think I'll save them for the next post!