Well, since it's Christmas, this edition of "What will he come up with now?" will focus on the Santa-related questions and commentary that have been going on in my life (OK, my car) for the last few days.
As you can imagine, my son, surely like all children everywhere right now, is very excited about Santa's imminent arrival, repeatedly counting down the days. It's funny to hear, though, because his grasp on abstract concepts like "tomorrow" and "yesterday" and "next week" is tenuous at best. So I get things like, "We have to go to sleep today and then wake up and then go to sleep the next day and then wake up and then the next day Santa comes. Right, Mommy?"
I think if he had a better understanding of time and how it worked, he'd be counting down the hours or even minutes.
Because that jolly old elf is so prominent right now, my son is, as usual, chock full of questions. Some of the usual -- "How does Santa get in our house since we don't have a chimney?" (magic key) and "How does Santa know whether I'm asleep or not?" (again, magic) -- and recently some more unusual ones. On the way home from the grocery store last night, I got some interesting questions that revealed perhaps my inquisitive son will not long be placated by the "magic" go-to answer.
"How old is Santa?" he asked.
"Well, um, son," I murmured desperately trying to buy time to come up with something. "Santa has been around for a really long time."
"But how old is he?" he insisted.
"I don't know really, but Santa lives forever," I said.
"But how does he live forever?" he asked.
"Magic," I replied (what else?). "That's part of the magic of Santa -- that he can live forever."
"What magic does he have for fighting?" my son asked.
"Fighting? Santa doesn't fight."
"Well then how does he not die?"
"He just doesn't, baby. Santa just lives forever. It's magic," I tried again.
"But I want to know how," my son insisted.
"I do, too, son," I said. "I do, too."
Fortunately, that was the end of it for a while, and he segued into questions about Santa's beard and why it's so long (because it's cold at the North Pole, duh) and whether he has to trim it occasionally.
Of course, that magic shtick can come back to bite me in the butt. This morning on the way to drop him off at the holiday camp he's attending while school's out, he told me he was very excited about Christmas because he couldn't wait to get the movie "Tangled."
Well, I cautioned, it takes a while for movies to be able to come home on DVD, and "Tangled" isn't there yet, so maybe he shouldn't look forward to having that just yet.
"But Santa can get it even if you can't, Mommy. He's magic. He can make it."
Well, just freaking great! I can't really refute that, but of course I can't get my hands on a "Tangled" DVD either. Let's hope excitement and distraction play their crucial role Christmas morning to keep my son's mind off Santa's obvious shortcoming this year. How in the world my parents kept up this charade, shepherding intelligent kids through the obvious leaps of logic and reason it takes, for so long is beyond me. He's 5, and he's already killing me on this!
Merry Christmas to everyone!
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