Friday, December 15, 2006

Santa and Imaginary Friends

Kasia has developed an imaginary friend this week named Doe-go. Doego seems to be a minature toy car, which is kind of an odd avatar for an imaginary friend, but its hard to tell if I have this right, since we are dealing with an invisible object. Tigana never developed an imaginary friend, so its been kind of fascinating watching the emergence of this character out of nowhere over the last four days to become a central focus of Kasia’s attention. We’re keen to see how this develops.

Meanwhile, Kasia is impatiently awaiting the arrival of Santa. Having a three-year old around the house makes Christmas magical in a way it hasn’t been since, well, since Tigana was three. I love seeing the season through three year old eyes.

But I have to confess that when Kasia was still awake at 10:00 on Tuesday, after two hours of various unsuccessful bedtime strategies, ending with a round of pathetic sobbing/begging on my part, I kind of lost it, and said (Lord forgive me!) “KASIA! If Santa sees you awake at this time of night, he’ll take you off the “Nice” list!

Kasia stops dead in her tracks, turns around and throws herself onto her bed, clearly devastated at the thought of earning a place on the “Naughty List”.

Overcome myself with guilt at such a cheap tactic, I quickly reassure Kasia that – if only she would go to sleep right now – there might still be a chance that Mom and I could intercede with Santa on her behalf and explain that Kasia has been nice all year, and really, should still be thought of as “nice”. It may not be too late, if only she will sleep now. (I feel despicable, but I really need sleep myself by this time.)

At which point Kasia turns to me and sobs, “It wasn’t me dad! It was Doego!”

Textbook stuff, I’m telling you!

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