Toddler Overcomes Fear Of Santa

It was Eloise's Christmas Party last Friday at the childcare centre (a separate affair from the graduation, please take note).

She is becoming quite the gregarious little creature and we didn't see that much of her. Nicole managed to grab an hour's break for work so she could come and endure, erm enjoy the party with me.

I saved her the trouble and the focus/commitment by queueing for Santa on her behalf. I should point out that clearly Santa's don't need to be that convincing to pass muster in a four-year-old's eyes - I mean check out those eyebrows! and the fake beard!

Anyhow I was almost at the front of the queue when the call went out for the Seahorse kids to go and get ready for their performance. How gutted was I!

Soon we were, um, treated to a set of performances of children speaking in French, singing the twelve days of Christmas Aussie style ("Five Kanga-rooooooooos") before Eloise and her cadre of militants came out dressed up in tiger masks, lion masks and fairy dresses to sing us some strange but strangely cute about animals creeping up on you so you'd better watch out then roaring loudly.

So the tiger mask stayed on while we went to see Santa afterwards and previous episodes of last-minute Santa fear were avoided as she is this year buying into the Christmas mythos (albeit minus the whole R-word thing) religiously. Oh, there's the R-word.

And then the usual but different wankoid clowns, this time Peabo and Bryson or something, came out to perform bad magic badly in a kind of post-ironic-Tommy-Cooper-but-with-ridiculous-wigs-and-make-up way.