Last week the Sunday school teacher pulled me close and whispered sweet St. Nick traditions in my ear. I marked it on my calendar. We don’t do the shoe outside the door thing. We also don’t do the Elf on the Shelf thing. In fact, the stockings (which used to be my childhood favorite part) are getting a little on the skimpy side anymore. But Christmas is Christmas and as long as we have ¾ of our children believing in the whole Santa Claus thang then I am doing things like finding the best nontrippable place outside the doors to put shoes where I will wake up in the middle of the night to panic and fill with dollar store candy.

A couple of weeks ago my husband told me, “I think we should tell Joey about Santa”
“No, I don’t want to….not yet..not this year,” I said.
I knew that at 10 he was getting a bit old for all that, but I remembered being pretty up there in age and was (reportedly) crushed to find out that it was all a big fat made up story, and I didn’t want all that.
I was putting the shoes out and my 10 year old tells my husband, “I know about the whole ‘St. Nick’ thing”

“How do you know?” asked my husband.

“The internet,” he said matter-of factly.

“Wait…do you mean just the St. Nick thing or the Santa thing,” I cautiously inquire.

“Both” he said.

Later he told me that he knew a few months back but didn’t say anything because I was always with the little kids.
Just like that. No tears, no shaking of the fists at the injustice of it all. Just aged out.. that’s all. More bittersweet for me than for him I guess. Two kids down and two to go.  Half of my kids still ‘believe’.  A couple years ago I made myself a pact that when all of the kids passed this phase of life we would go on vacation over the holidays.  Looks like we are that much closer to building that snowman in the sand.