Putting one over on the guy in the red suit

Santa is a sap.  He will have those elves of his make ANYTHING.


Not me.  I will NOT buy those horrible battery operated talking robot pet toys, but Santa, he is a complete push-over.  My girls know that anything you REALLY want, you ask Santa for, and that chubby old partially deaf guy with the thick white beard and REALLY DEEP POCKETS will find it for you.  The old guy hasn't let them down yet.


Yesterday Thing 1 asked me how many times we'll be seeing Santa this year.  Well, there's one this weekend at the church party, and we might see another one at the mall, why do you ask?


Because the tradition seems to be you can only ask Santa for one thing, and she has two items at the top of her list = two Santas.
Oh, clever girl!

Thing 1's cough has gotten worse but I've been sending her to school to cough and spread germs to all her class mates.  Because they only have two more days of school before the break, even if they're both half days, (?!? Why is the Thursday before Christmas break a half day?!?) and then after that I've got to ditch the kids to accomplish anything.

As I tucked Thing 2 in last night she decided she can't sleep with the vaporizer running in their room.  She decided that she needed something, preferably earmuffs, to muffle the sound.  I didn't find any earmuffs in my quick search of the available winter clothing but I did find a fleece scarf, which she agreed to let me tie around her head.  I forgot to mention that a month or two ago Thing 2 took to wearing sleeping masks.  She saw one at Old Navy and fell in love. I thought sleeping masks were something women only wore in movies and sitcoms, never in real life.  It seems kind of dramatic to me, but whatever.  It seems to work, she no longer calls me in the middle of the night complaining about nightmares, now she just calls me complaining she can't find her sleeping mask.  It's usually around her neck or forehead, but still it's less frequent or alarmed as the nightmare calls, so I'm cool with it.  She now has three, in case one gets lost.  Her favorite has huge exaggerated eyelashes painted on it.   So back to the scarf.  Last night she just had me tie the scarf around her eyes and ears and left off the sleeping mask.  I tied it in back so the knot would be out of the way because she sleeps on her side, and she looked like the sleeping bandit or someone who got just got really tired of swinging at the pinata.  Tonight she wanted the knot in front, and when I tied it over her eyes she pushed the knot up on her forehead so she could still wear the sleeping mask.  So she is wearing the fleece scarf tied in front on her forehead, and the sleeping mask underneath.  Rather than embarrass her by taking a picture of how she looked, I have taken it upon myself to make a digital recreation.

Except Thing 2 doesn't have the exceptionally pleased smile, of course.  She is quite serious.  But I couldn't find any towel wrap pictures looking serious, probably because no one can hold a straight face if someone points a camera at them when they're wearing one.
In any event, she looked awfully darn cute.  And almost regal.  Like she was wearing a towel crown.  It was sweet.