Baby’s Day Out: Ollie Meets Santa Claus

With Christmas coming, Ollie is experiencing a whole lot of things for the first time, and we’re experiencing a whole lot of things in a new way.

The big one so far has been taking Oliver to meet Santa Claus at the Pickering Town Centre. We pre-booked our visit and photo package using the Santas Fast Pass calendar tool, and we able to skip the pre-lunch hour line on Thursday morning when we got to Santa’s set-up at the mall. That planning, the simple step of picking a time and photo package, was a really, really, really smart thing to do. And I highly recommend it to every single parent or guardian or grown up that’s thinking of Santa Claus photos now or any year in the future.

When we arrived at the lower level photo spot, there was a line up of parents and small children patiently waiting their turn to see the big dude in red. We don’t know how long they’d all been waiting, but it was pretty impressive to see the kids behaving so well as they waited to pose for pics and tell Saint Nick what they want for Christmas this year.

In our line, there was only one little girl (and her parents) in front of us so we were thinking we’d be quick to get our turn. So, we pulled Ollie out of his stroller and let him look around at the lights and people and trees and shiny things all around him. And you can see in the pic that his mama snapped, that he was happy to be taking it all in with some awe in his eyes.

After a quick wait for some adorable photos of Santa and other people, we were ushered in by an assistant and Mrs. Claus. I handed Ollie to Jess, who took him over to meet Santa and sit on his knee. And then we participated in the time honoured tradition of trying to get the baby to look in the right direction and smile for the camera.

At first, I messed it up (of course) by being on the wrong side of the desk, which had him looking at me and smiling for my claps and cheers, and not at the camera.

But then I switched sides and Jess and I got more smiles and a better eye angle out of our really happy little boy.

After the photographer was done snapping, Jess did most of the looking at options and I crouched down to talk to Ollie and Santa, while the little guy continued to sit on Papa Noël’s knee, holding his finger and smiling even more. There was never a sad face or a tear or scream or any of the things that parents have to be prepared for when they hand their baby to a stranger. This kid was a superhero, just like he was when he met Meghan Patrick and Arkells and every time he’s met a stranger that wants to say hi and tell him how cute he is.

Note: High five to Santa for knowing his comic book characters and putting two and two together when we told him that Ollie dressed up as Green Arrow for his first Halloween.

And now, we’ve got a gorgeous picture of a happy seven and a month old baby boy, sitting with Santa and smiling for the camera.

Just look at this kid. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I’m a lucky guy!