Santa's Little Helper

When my children find out the "truth" about Santa we do something fun that my parents did with us, they get to be Santa's Helper. But I need to start this story from the beginning.

Last Christmas Emma tormented me with questions. How does Santa do this and how does he do that? I was very worried that at some point she'd figure it out and blurt it out in front of her brothers and it would be ruined for them. I was particularly worried about Nathan who was only 4 and I really wanted him to believe for a while. So in April, during a snuggle time in my bed, I asked her if she could keep a grown-up secret. She was very excited. I said to her, "There is a secret about Santa."

"Oh," she said, "I know that. You and Daddy are really Santa."

I told her that she was right and that now she could get up in the night and help eat cookies and fill stockings. So all year she's looked forward to Christmas Eve. She may have been more excited for this Christmas than she was before. But we still had to wait for everyone to fall asleep. Around 10:30pm we got Emma out of bed and brought her, all bleary eyed, downstairs. She looked sideways at the cookies. "You can have one!" I reminded her. She looked like she would puke. "Or you can wait a while." She picked up a tiny cookie and nibbled at it.

I put out the stockings and fruit and Emma went to work. After a while, she perked up and was a busy little elf. When we laid the stockings around the tree she said, "I stayed up the whole time!"

We told the kids they couldn't get up before 7:00am. At 7:20 Emma got up. She ran into the boys room and started shouting. "It's 7:21, it's 7:21, it's 7:21! Go potty and get in Mom and Dad's room!" Thus started our Christmas morning.