I have two step kids. The oldest is 11. This is her first Christmas knowing the Santa Claus secret. The youngest is a little more than a month shy of turning 10. He is still a believer, but its a close call.

We might have blown it tonight… Maybe. Probably not, but maybe.

All day long he’s been psyched to the point of spontaneous combustion. He mentioned early this afternoon that he might have trouble falling asleep before Santa’s arrival tonight. I just shrugged it off because I knew he was already hyper enough to be wearing himself out.

Not quite.

We let him stay up a little late, but when bed time came along he went quietly. His sister stayed up late too because she wanted to help Santa. We waited about half an hour after bed time and peeked in my stepson’s room and he was wide awake. My beautiful wife, his mother, sat with him for a little while trying to get him to relax. Apparently he was scaring the crap out of himself in two ways. First, he thought an episode at school might have put him on the naughty list. We assured him that was not the case. Second, he was afraid that if he’s awake at midnight then Santa would skip our house. We assured him that too was incorrect. He seemed okay, and he had a little warm milk.

All was well. Santa came and dished out the gifts, ate the cookies, fed the carrots to the reindeer, and drank the milk. He was starting to fill the stockings. All were taken down, one was returned to the mantle, a second was about to be re-hung when a knock came on the door.

Crap!

I kept him out of the room on a pretty thin pretext, but he could probably hear what was going on. He didn’t seem to figure out what was going on, but who knows. We calmed him down again and told him that he had nothing to worry about and he went back to bed okay. But I am worried that he heard more than he let on, or that he is laying in bed putting two and two together right now.

…and the clock creeps toward midnight with me fearing we might have blown what is probably his last real shot at being a true believer.

HoHoHo.