Abort! Abort! Abort!

I spend some effort in maintaining the Santa thing. Gift tags and notes for both my home and my Ex's so we both have that Santa continuity. Santa NORAD. Cookies eaten, milk drank, and carrot bits scattered by the fire place.

So it was with some horror that I realized I almost blew it with Lamb on Sunday.

I'd already gone over present options with Mister for his sister. Mister is old enough to know the truth about Santa and the Social Security Trust Fund, so I gave him the choice of what present would be his. The rest would be allocated to being from me or Santa. He knows this is probably his last year of not buying his present for his sister with own money, so he made it good.

So when I wanted to do the same with Lamb, I started naming presents she could give.

And then stopped in horror, quickly recounting which presents I'd named, because I realized that none of those presents named could now be from Santa! Doh! Lamb still believes!

I bluffed my way through on restating the name of one present that had to be from Santa, and Lamb bought that instant change of history. And I could see that Santa's gifts for Mister would be less robust than I'd planned. Oh well. Lamb will probably take it as a good sign of her relative naughty-nice ratio that she comes out better on the Santa front than Mister.

Oh well. It could have been worse. Santa came darn close to leaving socks and nail clippers for Mister.