Santa's List

Nothing like a little bit of last minute Christmas preparation to keep a girl up all night, right? So I made a list of things I needed to get done, and put it on my dresser. It felt more manageable to actually write down "Charge Camera" than to actually go and find the charger and plug the dang thing in.

This morning Harrison somehow got his hands on the list and came into the kitchen to tell me he found Santa's List in my room.

"Let me see it," I said, expecting to see another drawing (which, don't get me wrong, but I can only take so many pictures of monsters eating blood before it becomes sort of ho-hum.)

"NO! It says something you can't see."

"Harrison, let me see it." Now I'm worried it's a receipt I'll need or a bill I intended to ignore until January...

"I don't want you to see." And he runs off down the hall with something behind his back.

So the chase is on. I catch him, and he starts CRYING.

"No Mom, PLEASE DON'T SEE IT!"

I spy my To-Do List, and take it from him, asking him what he thinks it says.

"Santa put my name on there," he sobbed.

And he pointed to his name and started crying again.

Poor thing just learned how to recognize his own name. Unfortunately, he can't read "Need To Buy" as a column header. And it uses an awful lot of the same letters as "Naughty."

All he knew is he had gone through the effort of pulling out a stool, sneaking into my room, and climbing to the top of my dresser to retrieve a toy I took from him, and he found his worst nightmare, calling him out by name.