Seasons Of Love

Here Comes Santa Claus

Rose was not a morning person. Much like her mum, she would always rather stay up late than wake up early. Once she was out of bed she was fine. She'd barely sit still for a minute until she was back in bed for the night. But getting her up and ready for nursery? That was always a struggle.

The only thing that ever outweighed her desire to sleep in was her excitement. As alike as Autumn knew her and her daughter were, Rose had still inherited plenty from Winter. The biggest thing was how happy she always was. She would get excited about even the smallest things. So if the family had an outing planned she was looking forward too, if she knew that people were coming to visit, or even just if the nursery was serving her favorite lunch that day mornings went much smoother. On those days she even woke up before her parents and acted as the cutest alarm clock that they were unable to snooze.

And tonight was one of the most exciting in a toddler's life. Santa was coming.

Winter and Autumn had just as hard a time sleeping as their daughter that night. They wanted to get everything perfect for their daughter's first real Christmas morning. Both of them woke up well before their alarm, unable to get back to sleep as they thought through every detail of their plan. Eventually they decided to just stop kidding themselves. It was clear they were up for the day. To pass the time they cuddled together on the bed with their eyes trained on the baby monitor watching for the perfect moment to put their plan in motion. 

Soon enough they heard exactly what they had been listening for. Ever since she was a baby Rose had made the same sighing noise when she was really asleep. Once they heard that Winter and Autumn shared an excited look. It was still only 3 AM so they knew she wouldn't be up for another two hours at least. Plenty of time to create some holiday magic.

Winter was far more invested in the "legend" of Santa than Autumn was. She was absolutely going to play along, she wanted nothing more than for her daughter to experience the childlike joy that tradition brought, joy she never got to experience. But had it been left up to her she wouldn't have come up with half the ideas that Winter had. Her husband had been planning for weeks, searching for a little way to "prove" that Santa had been to the house. So as soon as he and Autumn lugged the presents up to the sleeping girls room, he got to work. He left his wife to the task of arranging the presents as he took care of everything else.

He made his way down to the kitchen and poured some flour into a cake pan. He then grabbed a pair of his boots before making his way to the fireplace. He coated the bottom of the shoe before pressing it against the hardwood floor. As he admired his work, Caddie appeared in the room and walked right through the footprint and made four small paw prints of his own. The cat shot a seemingly annoyed glare at his spare human as he walked away. With every step he shook his paws trying to clear them of the makeshift snow.

"I suppose I should have expected that." Winter laughed.

He decided to leave the paw prints. If Rose happened to notice them they could always say Caddie was helping Santa. He turned back to the task, creating a perfect trail of footprints through the house, leading right up to the gifts in Rose's room. As he placed the last boot print right beside his wife, Autumn stood up to survey his work.

"A nice touch, my sweet." She whispered as she hugged her husband, a teasing glint in her eye as she watched Caddie make his way into the room tracking more flour across the floor. "Even if it is a mess."

"Anything for Rose. I'll clear it up later of course." He said with a smile before giving her a quick peck. "And the presents look spectacular, my love. If I didn't know any better I'd say Santa himself had truly done this."

They both admired the doll house, perfectly placed in the corner of the room. Autumn had decided to hang one string of Christmas lights across the porch and place a small decorated tree in one of the rooms to make it a little more festive. She had placed the dolls by the tree with the little black cat between them. After one more glance at their still sleeping daughter the two snuck out of the room, closing the door softly so they didn't wake her too early. Once they were back in the hall Winter gave Autumn a proper kiss before heading back downstairs to clean up his tools.