Santa Claus

It happens every year. Someone comes up to Hannah and says, "Have you gone to see Santa yet??? What's he gonna bring you? Have you been a good girl?"

So, now that she's finally old enough to understand I gave her the "Santa" talk.

We don't celebrate Santa in our house; same reason we don't celebrate the Easter bunny. (Oh, we still give our kids candy on Easter but it comes from Mom and Dad and is just a part of celebrating the real reason for the holiday). Chris and I want Hannah and Caden to grow up knowing that Christmas is about Christ's birth, the reason we give presents is to celebrate that Christ gave us the greatest gift, His Son. To us, Christmas is a CELEBRATION of all that Christ has given us through his precious gift.

We also want our children to know that they get presents from us regardless of how bad or good they've been. We love our children, not because of what they do, but because of who they are, and that is why we give them gifts. We just don't want them thinking they have to DO something in order to receive good gifts. I know some of you think we're crazy, but I do think we need to be very careful about the messages we're sending our children.

Now I realize that our views on Santa Claus are probably a lot different then yours...that's OK. I don't think that Santa is the devil incarnate, and that everyone who brings their kids to sit on Santa's lap is not teaching their kids the real meaning of Christmas. Chris's family always got a present from Santa every year and he turned out normal! :)

So, we just told Hannah "some people celebrate Christmas with Santa Claus, he's just a made up pretend man who brings presents to children who've been good for Christmas. We give you presents because we love you and you're our child. We celebrate Christmas as Christ's birthday and we give gifts as a part of celebrating Christ giving us the BEST GIFT EVER!.. JESUS!!!"

More Injuries

Anyone who knows Hannah knows that she's an active girl. She loves to run, wrestle, jump, tackle, fall. The surprising thing is that we've had 4 1/2 years without incident; until about a month ago when she broke her nose, and until Sunday when she broke her elbow.

We had some friends over and one of the kids was playing around with Hannah and tossed her on her bed. Hannah came out of her room white as a ghost and screaming. At one point she even said "this is the worstest time of my life" (which actually made me laugh.)

Her elbow swelled up and she still wasn't bending it on Monday morning so we took her in. Four hours and three doctors appointments later we were on our way home with Hannah in a bright pink cast. She'll be in the cast for 4 weeks which doesn't sound long to any of you I'm sure, but to me it sounds looonnggg. No riding bikes, no sledding, no horse playing, no hitting brother with the casted arm. Hello, have you met my child??? It won't be easy. Although I will say that she's been a lot more docile since the incident and she's even been encouraging Caden to stop jumping off the arm of our chairs.

So, now I'm back in the mode of taking her potty, getting her dressed, helping her take the lids off the markers, you name it. She still has pretty limited mobility in her fingers but I'm hoping that will be getter as the swelling goes down.

Never a dull moment in the Wassenaar household!