Phanta Claus

OK, I did it again. What a new mom I am.

Anyway, we took Ben to the Phillies ball park so we could have his picture taken with the Philly Phanatic dressed as Santa Claus. We thought if the picture came out good, we could use it as our Christmas card picture. Last year, Ben did great with Santa. In fact we think this is the most precious picture of the two of them.

So, I naively thought this year he wouldn't be afraid of Santa. What was I thinking? He's 18 months old! Isn't every 18 month old afraid of Santa? Especially if he's big and green? This is the result.

I'm not as hormonal as I was last week, so I'm actually laughing pretty hard at this. And here's the kicker - notice no J.R. in the picture? We got in line at 10:45 AM and pictures didn't start until 11:00 AM. We had to wait outside so we were freezing. Ben was getting antsy so J.R. walked him around for a while. Then Ben started getting cranky, so I thought I'd take him into the store and walk around in there. Upstairs there is a life size Phanatic statue, so we thought that if Ben couldn't take much more, we'd just take a picture there. Well, not long after I got out of the line, it started moving. J.R. stayed, but when I didn't come back right away, he started letting people ahead of him, then finally got out of line. Ben and I were upstairs looking at the statue and he was calming down pretty good. "Phanta Claus" was there too; we could see people getting their picture taken so we were watching them. That really calmed Ben down. Finally I decided to get back in line. I didn't realize J.R. had stepped out, so I went through the entire line, excusing myself as I went, expecting people to get mad and think I was cutting (actually, everyone was really nice). I got all the way to the front of the line, and the woman who was originally standing behind me told me J.R. got out of line. She and her husband let me get in front of them, and I tore off our coats to get ready - there were only like 1 or 2 people in front of us. I didn't even have time to call J.R. to tell him to join us. I put Ben down and he immediately made friends with a Mrs. Claus (a ballgirl I guess). He seemed really happy so I was happy. In fact, when it was our turn, he was ready to go. The security lady said the same thing. Well, there was another Mrs. Claus near "Phanta" and she picked him up. That was the beginning of the end. Cry, cry...sigh. The picture is obviously the result. The Mrs. Claus that took our picture was cute - she said "I got him looking at me". Thanks. I just said "Awesome, thank you very much" and we got out of line. There was a fanfoto guy there too so crankybaby's picture is on the website too.

Guess we need to come up with something else for our Christmas card.