Not everyone loves the big guy.....

This is, by far my favorite picture of my kids. I love everything about it. How my daughter is smiling, how my son is terrified....How the Santa doesn't seem to care about anything....he has this glazed over look in his eye....did that happen because of my kids or was it the countless that came before?
Oh well if you can't have at least one picture that is worthy of that famous web site, Awkward Family Photo's....then that is just sad.
My son was only about two years old in this picture and that would make my daughter five. I look at this now and think how telling this would be of our lives. My son in distress, my daughter oblivious and adults with glazed over expressions in the middle.  I am not saying that my daughter is heartless, by all means she is the nicest person on the planet. This can be verified by all that have met her. However when it comes to her brother....well this must be true of all siblings, but I only have these two kids so I don't have much else to go on. I know my brothers and I did not get along until we reached adulthood, and even then sometimes things were tense. Perhaps that is why I hoped for more from my kids. They would not only get along, but LOVE each other....
Que corny music.....
I think this quick snapshot, taken at a random mall, should have been fair warning. Things were going to happen, things that would upset my son, and not even remotely affect my daughter. She is often in need of reminders as to why her brother is the way he is, and how we all need patience and kindness and in his own home, he should be allowed to be as weird as he wants to be. We all need this reminder.
I am also reminded of a story that was no where near the Christmas season but it played out just like this picture. We were on our way to a local ranch for their annual Threshing Bee. It was hot and my son began complaining of a horrible headache from the back seat of the car. I was alone driving them and asked him how bad it was. He said it is really bad and in fact he was about to throw up. I, acting quickly grabbed a bag of food that we had packed, dumped out the contents, tossed the bag into the back seat while navigating the car safely to the side of the road. (Mom's are cool like this)
As I am doing this I can hear my son wretching into the bag I had just handed him. Poor kid. When we were at a stop and I turned around, I see my son, holding his bag, wiping his forehead and my daughter gazing out the window....She looked over at me and said, "Oh are we there?"
We were, as I said on the side of the road. Out her window was a stoplight and not much else.
I looked at her in surprise and a bit of disgust..."No, we are not. Your brother just barfed! How could you miss that?"
"Oh," she says, "I was just zoned out I guess."
So here was this moment when I realized not much affects her....or she is in some kind of coma....not likely, but I could not believe what had just happened. Once my son was all cleaned up and reporting no more headache we were on our way to the Threshing Bee. We didn't stay too long. I was a wreck. My kids were fine. One oblivious, and one had just simply moved on....
Wow.

So now when I am at the Mall or where ever I see kids lined up to take a picture with the Big Guy I look at those in line a little different. Does how we handle a picture with Santa really predict the future? It sure did in our family.