Santa Brings One Thing...

When The Rock Star sat on Santa's lap last year, he asked for a green hat. My mom was with me. We had no idea why he had suddenly gotten the notion that he needed a green hat. I thought, for sure, that he would be sorely disappointed on Christmas morning when he opened an anti climatic hat. I'll just tell you that it wasn't the first time I was wrong.

Santa, being the jolly guy that he is, also brought Garrett a kiddie drum set. He opened the hat after he got his drums and he was still incredibly happy.

This year I asked Garrett early what he wanted from Santa. I just thought that, in the event he asked for Barbados or a big screen television, I might need time to talk him into something else. He replied that he wanted a nummy. I knew what he meant. Last year, mall Santa gave him a candy cane.

Me: You want a candy cane?
TRS: Yeah.
Me: Anything else? You can ask Santa for one other thing.
TRS: A pirate boat.
Me: But you have a pirate boat.
TRS: I want another one.
Me: Oh boy.

I set to looking on the Internet to see what kind of inexpensive pirate boat Santa might be able to concoct in his, uh, toy shop. Today, I walked through WalMart while Garrett was at preschool. I wasn't finding much, let me tell you. Thankfully, it's not my problem. Thankfully, Santa could deal with it.

I had to go to a different WalMart once I picked Garrett up because I heard that there were turkeys for .40 cents a pound (thanks Heather!) but they were out of them at the WalMart that I went to first. So, Garrett, Matthew and I stopped by the one closer to our house. As I walked through the store, The Rock Star got sidetracked.

And he fell in love with a toy. Crocodile tears rolled down his face when I told him no. So I told him to put it on his Christmas list. His sobbing stopped. "Can I ask Santa for it?" I told him that he could only ask Santa for one thing and so he would have to choose between the beloved toy that had worked its way into his heart or another pirate boat. For him, the choice was easy.

This is going to seem like a total non sequitur but Garrett loves the trash man. He asks, almost every day, if the trash man will be coming. He sits in the front window and watches and waits and waits and watches. It's peculiar. Anyway. He's obsessed. The kid will drop everything and run to the window if he hears a trash truck. So is it any wonder that this is the toy that suddenly stole my three-year-old's heart?

Last year, I wondered if Santa thought it was weird that my two-year-old asked for a green hat. If mall Santa's everywhere had lists of bizarre things children ask for, this one might take the cake.

Santa: What would you like for Christmas, little boy?
TRS: A trash truck.
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Speaking of The Rock Star, someone who started reading this blog after Garrett had been renamed asked how he came by his nickname. I used to call him The Dictator because, well, he acted like one. However, last May, he wandered into my bedroom and emphatically yelled, "I'm a rock star!" I blogged about it and a reader suggested that maybe he got it from Sid the Science Kid on KPBS. Though I hadn't realized it at the time, that is exactly where it came from. He continued telling us for quite awhile that he was a rock star. He loves music and anything having to do with drums or guitars so it just seemed to fit.