You + Me = 3: Santa Baby

I have been horrible about posting all month long....my only excuse is that it is the holiday season, and who has time for ANYTHING these days?? Anyway, I have many photos stockpiling that I still plan to post, as well as MUCH updating that needs to be done on our Photobucket account. I have grand hopes of doing both in the next several days (perhaps while we are blizzard-bound in our home during the worst Christmas storm in 30 years??), but please forgive me if neither happens before the new year. You'll still love me, right?

Until then, let me appease you with a tasty little morsel. We took Liam to see Santa this past Friday, mainly (let's be honest) for our own benefit of fawning over our little guy. We pretty much had our minds made up that this outing would NOT go well; Liam, you see, is not exactly fond of strangers. There have been a number of incidents in the past where perfectly normal/harmless people have gently approached him with a smile, soft voice and gentle demeanor, and even that was enough to inspire Liam's trademark "sad lip", wails and crocodile tears. So the thought of a larger-than-life man in a red suit and bushy beard inciting anything but the same (or worse) reaction was highly unlikely.

Our game plan was simple: we fed Liam immediately before heading into the lineup of families waiting for their turn with the Big Guy, in hopes that he would be content to wait. As we stood in line, Liam was all smiles, cooing and watching the flurry of activity around him without a trace of grumbling. So far, so good. As we reached the head of the line, we decided to implement tactic #2 of the official game plan: We would not allow Liam to actually see Santa, in hopes of maintaining the aura of calm. This basically involved us backing Liam into Santa's lap, all the while cooing and making goofy faces at him as we slowly retreated in order to keep his attention on us. This worked for all of 15 seconds, until Santa (who apparently was completely oblivious to our ingenious plan) decided to start talking to Liam. We held our breath, waiting for the inevitable sobs....

Which never came.

Seriously......? YES!!!! : ) Liam appeared to be very curious about Santa, perhaps a mite concerned....but he simply adopted his usual "Stone Face" expression for the camera, and we got our photo. Considering all the children that preceded him with either panicked cries or complete refusal to stand for a photo, we were quite impressed with our little Liam.

So, one insanely expensive portrait fee later, here are the results: