You Can't Hit a Home Run Every Time

Or so my wise husband says.

Christmas was really nice this year. I didn't battle the usual range of emotions I typically face around the holidays. Usually, I get really excited early (around Halloween), then in the midst of preparing for Christmas, sometime between Thanksgiving and the middle of December, I slip into a real funk. This year that wasn't the case at all, and it was so nice. I did miss the "up" part of the manic cycle a bit, but not having to deal with the "down" part was more than worth missing the euphoric phase.

So we prepared for Christmas, decorated the house, bought our gifts, wrapped most of them before Christmas eve, and had everything ready for Christmas. Here's where the not-hitting-a-homerun part comes in. Aaron's reaction to his Santa gifts was flat, to say the least. He got a new bicycle, some Batman legos he's been asking for, a game for his Wii, some puzzles and two coveted Webkinz. Oh, and a 4' tall stocking crammed full of stuff. He walked into the living room, looked at the bicycle, looked over it to see what was behind it, looked around the room without even cracking a smile then went for his stocking. Pressly and I were sort of just stunned. All we could do was look at one another and shrug.

In retrospect, I think we identified the problem. You see, Santa didn't bring Aaron anything that was on his list this year. Maybe because that blasted list contained things:
a) that simply don't exist (a particular Transformer Mini-Con that exists only on the video games)
b) which were unreasonable (the minifigures from various retired Lego sets selling for $50++ EACH on ebay - just the figures, not the sets!!)
c) that were simply not possible to get (a Webkinz that hasn't been released yet)

Oh, and his list changed about 48bazillion times. No exaggeration. (c'mon - I don't exaggerate!)

We explained to Aaron that Santa's magic can only stretch so far. I'm afraid the boy is doing the "math." He's very smart, but also a real dreamer who believes in magic and miracles. At least he hasn't cracked open the Encyclopedia to look up the entry on Santa Claus. (yet).