Kaeli knows the truth

Immediately after church today Kaeli came up to me and very matter-of-factly asked "Are you the Easter Bunny?". Of course, I tried playing it off and responding with a question...."Do I look like the Easter Bunny?" What I really was doing was trying to buy a little time to figure out how I was going to answer her. It appeared that whether or not I was ready, she was not going to let this go without a straight answer.

See, I made a little mistake....last night when I went to get the books I had been hiding I found them lying on the floor of the closet. I decided to take a chance and put them in the basket anyway--hoping maybe the books fell but no one saw them. I was wrong. At church Kaeli mentioned her suspicions to her friend Eme. Eme found out about everything at Christmas...so she knew. Eme tried to pretend like she didn't know, but Kaeli said she could just tell by the look on her face.

A couple of hours later I was washing dishes when Kaeli approached me with the inevitable REST of her questions. Fortunately she waited until her siblings were down for naps or safely out of earshot.

So I'm washing dishes and she says "Mom, if the Easter bunny isn't real what about the tooth fairy or....or.....Santa?!! Please don't tell me you're Santa, too......oh please don't tell me.....you are, aren't you?". I'm sitting there concentrating more than I ever had before on the dishes--trying hard to pretend not to be laughing and trying really, really hard to figure out how I can answer this without telling her the truth. I just wasn't ready to have this all come to an end-she's still so young in my mind! Finally I realize there's no way out of this and it's time to just tell the truth. I dry my hands and just look at her, with tears in my eyes, and nod my head in agreement that I am all of those things. Oh it was so hard to do!! There we sat laughing and crying together. I can't really explain why I cried, probably just the realization my little girl is definitely growing up. And there's just something about that little loss of the "fairy tale".

Some of her funniest comments/questions: Well, why do they have the Norad tracking thing online?; What about the cookies? You and daddy ate the cookies?--You are sooo lucky! (I found that one hilarious, she just found out Santa isn't real and she's just upset we ate the cookies and not her?); So YOU actually bought the Wii for us? I can't believe you would spend all that money for it; Oh wait...I was gonna ask Santa for a golf cart this year.....I guess I won't be getting that since I KNOW you won't buy me one. (again that got me laughing pretty hard, too--probably the tone of her voice more than anything); I KNEW there couldn't really be flying reindeer; what about the toothfairy--where'd you get all those letters from her?--I printed them from the internet, by the way.

So, I guess I now have another little helper for all the holidays--she's very excited to know that she can now help with all the fun stuff "behind the scenes". All-in-all I thought she handled the news very well. She said she'd been wondering for a while but was afraid to ask before. I was so afraid she'd be angry with me. Oh, and the sweetest thing she said was "well, you were gonna have to tell me one day so that I can do all that for my kids someday". It just let me know that she didn't hold it against me for keeping all those secrets from her...she's already looking forward to sharing the "magic" with her own kids.

Now I wonder how long before the other 3 figure it out--I have no illusions the rest of them will make it to age 9 before they know, too.

Here's a picture of my "big girl" today.