Yes Virginia...

So my 9 year old son asked me, "Is Santa Claus real? Because Eric said that Santa Claus isn't real."

Do I allow my son to remain youthful and innocent by believing in Santa and risk him looking "uncool" in front of his friends and classmates? I can picture it now, "HA HA! X still believes in Santa!!! Don't you know he's not real?!? DUH!" And even though that is just minor teasing, I don't want to subject him to any of that if I can help it.

Plus, I should mention that the above Eric also taught the word "hump" to my son who then used it in an email exchange with a female classmate who first teased him by writing, "You kissed Stacy." His retort? "You humped Antonio." And yes, the girl's mother told me about the email. We both log on to our kids' email accounts to check on what they do, and the "hump email" happened after I took a few weeks off of snooping. (I got bored with the incessant exchanges of Yahoo smiley faces.) We both laughed about it after we talked to our kids who told us they didn't even know what "hump" meant, but not after I explained to the mother that we don't use the word "hump" at home and figured they learned it from classmates. I didn't want her going around thinking that I run around the house yelling at my husband to hump me.

The above Eric is also into brand name clothing such as Phat Farm, Sean John, Ecko, NBA/NFL jerseys, etc. My son doesn't care about the Target/Costco/Old Navy clothes I buy for him so I'm dreading the day he asks me for a Kobe Bryant jersey - to which I'll have to tell him, "I'll get you a Baron Davis or Jason Richardson jersey instead." I ain't raising no Lakers fans in this house!

I got out of the Santa Claus dilemma by explaining to my son that while Santa Claus isn't real, he's based on a real person: St. Nicolas - this was met with some understanding since we send him to Catholic school. I told him that he could still write a letter to Santa for fun and we'd mail it off with his sister's letter.

His response: "Can I just email him? It's faster."

My response: "As long as you don't use the word 'hump.'"

P.S.
While my older son may be losing his innocence, my 2 1/2 month old son laughed and giggled for the very first time today with nothing but innocence in his eyes and the sweet smell of baby breath in his mouth.