Henry likes Santa...kinda...sorta

I took Henry to the mall today for the time-honored tradition of having his picture taken with Santa. This was our second attempt. The first time, my mom and I took him on a whim since there was no line at the Santa Land in the mall. I was worried about Henry freaking out and not liking Santa, but we introduced him to Santa slowly, and he seemed fine. However, he wouldn't look at the camera. He couldn't take his eyes off Santa. It would have made a cute picture except all you could see of Henry was the back of his head in most of the shots. There was one shot where he was looking at the camera, but he had his hand covering most of his face. I decided not to buy any of those pictures. So, today we tried again. We went to a different mall, but once again, there was no line when we got there. While we waited for the photographer to wrap up with the last customer, Henry checked out the Santa area. Santa was sitting in his chair, calling Henry over, but Henry just walked around touching ornaments and playing with the train under the tree. When it was time, he was o.k. with sitting on Santa's lap. He wasn't scared of Santa, but really wanted to get back down to play with the toys. We handed him a train, and he was good to go. He sat on Santa's lap and looked right at the camera. But he wouldn't smile. He had sort of a blank expression on his face. While the photographer showed me the blank-expression pictures on the computer, Henry stayed on Santa's lap. I glanced over to see Henry and Santa looking at each other, and I said "That's good! Take that picture!" So, the photographer snapped the photo, and that's the one we got. It's not the classic smiling-at-the-camera pose, but I think it's cute.

p.s. Here's Henry's Santa picture from last year. We had it done at a dog grooming shop while we were getting Rocco & Stella's picture taken with Santa. Nice fake beard, Santa! At least this year we went to a place where they gave away candy canes instead of dog biscuits. Seriously.