Santa...

So Alex is 2 1/2 (well technically 2 3/4 lol) which is an awkward age for introducing Santa in my opinion. He is young enough to understand the concept of doing certain things for certain holidays (ex: fireworks for 4th of July, costumes for Halloween, turkeys for thanksgiving, etc) so we introduced Frosty the Snowman (who Alex is OBSESSED with by the way. And no not just any snowman will do... has to be Frosty.) and Santa. He understands that these are fictional characters that show up on decorations and in movies... but when it came time for me to take him to the mall to meet Santa, i ran into an unexpected roadblock. We got all dressed up and ready to go and left the house. Alex promptly ran into our yard to our big stand up/blow up Santa and said "Mommy i found him!".... he didn't understand that Santa was a "real" person. So i tried explaining it to him but i could tell it just wasn't clicking in his head. We did the pics with Santa, which made him super shy, and headed home. It was at that point that i decided that Santa would not be bringing Alex presents this year. I was afraid that he'd get scared that someone comes into his house at night and leaves stuff behind (which for Alex would be a rational fear lol). So after discussing it with my parents we decided Alex would just get presents from family members (no Santa) and we knew he'd be THRILLED that way and never know what he was missing.

Then i turned on the Christmas episodes of Caillou tonight and it all changed. Caillou explained several times that Santa is a man that comes to your house on Christmas and leaves presents under your Christmas tree, and puts goodies in your stocking. Then he leaves and does it for every other boy and girl in the world. Alex just stared at the TV. never said a word or made a sound. Then the next episode came on and Caillou's friends were explaining their holiday traditions (one was Jewish and one was Indian (i think)) so he explained Santa again. Alex just stared. So when it was all said and done i asked Alex if he wanted Santa to bring him presents on Christmas and he promptly answered yes..... right now. lol so i said we had to wait 8 days until Christmas and then Santa would bring the presents. I asked him what he wanted Santa to bring and he said "a big caterpillar that doesn't make noise... like Coopers!" (Cooper is his best friend at daycare. They've been besties since they were 6mo old). I then asked if he wanted a new book and he said yes. Then he said he wanted Santa to bring him candy canes to eat lol. So maybe we WILL do a few presents from Santa this year after all!

To those of you with toddlers, what are you doing about Santa? have you introduced him as just a man or as a present giver? Are you doing just one present from Santa or all of them?