Friday, Dec. 23: Dead Santa

Here in Florida at Granny Marilyn and Grandpa Paul's house Gavin is sleeping in a "big boy bed," which is a full size mattress on the floor of the bedroom across the hall from the one Stacy and I are sleeping in. Every other time he's been here he slept in a Pack N Play but he's way too big for that now (he's been on several scales since we've been in FL including a big old-timey scale at Publix and on each one he's weighed about 37 lbs.). This is the first time Gavin has slept in a room by himself in a bed he can actually get out of. It's gone well, though he has locked himself in the room several times now. The first time he did it he'd woken up from a nap and I thought I heard the thump of Paul's shoe organizer which hangs on the back of the door (the room is a spare bedroom but is where Paul has a lot of his clothes). I put my ear to the door to listen because I wanted to be sure Gavin was awake before I went in. And then the door knob rattled a little bit, but when I tried to open it I could not. I knew this wasn't good, but I also knew that he's a smart guy and could probably unlock it since he's the one who locked it in the first place. I called to Stacy, "Hon, Gavin's locked himself in the bedroom." My goal was to inform her, not to panic her, though her first course of action was to run past me out the front door saying, "I'll go check his window!" It took me about 1 minute to talk Gavin through it: "Turn the little button in the center of the door knob, Bud." His response? "Gonna." The knob wiggled a bit more. I repeated my instructions and he repeated his response. Then he did it and I opened the door before Stacy could throw a rock through the window or something.

I have a bad habit of expressing my impatience to Gavin by saying, "Are you going to_________, or what?" Now, that blank can be filled with anything from "put your shoes on" to "pick up your trucks," it doesn't matter. It's always something he doesn't particularly want to do. And so each and every time he answers, "What." He's too smart for my own good.

Paul let Gavin use a band saw, which nearly gave me a heart attack. Not by himself, and completely supervised, mind you, but still. If you ask Gavin about it he will excitedly tell you that he cut a diamond. A diamond shape, that is, out of paperboard. I am going to have nightmares about Gavin losing fingers for months.

Stacy is giving Gavin a bath right now and I can hear them singing a song in Spanish (Stacy is doing most of the singing) and they keep inserting names of people Gavin knows. They've said, "Mama D" twice, and both times my name got big laughs. I have no idea if this is a good thing or not.

So the Santa lie has begun. I'm not sure how I feel about this. What's the benefit of deceiving Gavin for the next five or so years of his life? I know it's all in fun (right?), but I don't claim to get it. I don't remember when or how I learned that Santa wasn't real, so I can't say if it was hard news for me to take. I remember in elementary school that Courtney Perna believed in Santa longer than anybody. But now judging from her Facebook profile, she's successful and glamorous, so it must not have damaged her that much.

Actually, Stacy, Gavin, and Marilyn saw Santa die last night. They were driving around in the golf cart to look at Christmas lights (I opted out, offering to clean the kitchen instead, that's how much I like Christmas light tourism). At one house there was quite the display, the yard decked out with a life-size Santa on a little stage in the middle of the yard. He even danced and sang "Jingle Bells" and Marilyn swears he almost looked real. That is until he danced himself off of his platform and fell face first into the ground where all singing and dancing ceased. Stacy and Marilyn laughed and laughed but Gavin put his thumb in his mouth and announced that he wanted to go back to the casa. Can't say I blame him.