Nina had her first encounter with Santa today. She was a little sleepy, as it was just before her naptime. I put her on his lap and after a few moments of looking a bit perplexed, she settled in comfortably, as if thinking, “OK, so this guy’s going to rock me to sleep today.” Santa gave her a candy cane and suggested that Daddy take it home and use it to stir a cup of hot chocolate. That seemed like very Santa Claus-ish advice. This was a very softspoken and gentle Santa — no bellowing Ho-Ho-Ho’s or shouts of Merry Christmas. I guess that kind of thing just scares the kids.

Nina fell asleep shortly after meeting Santa. We made several more stops in Manhattan afterwards, including lunch at Menkuitei, our favorite NY Japanese restaurant. Today they had roasted ginko nuts, a nice toasty treat for a cold day. It was below freezing, and Daddy — our hero — pushed Nina’s stroller through much slushy snow, and carried her up and down numerous subway stairs. Nina went to bed at eight o’clock and Mama is about to follow.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 20th, 2008 at 10:44 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.