Yesterday was my children's first Halloween. Well, perhaps not the first, but the first that they experienced. Last year, my daughter was eleven days away from being born and mommy was uncomfortable so her brother wore a, "Will trade sister for candy" t-shirt. He took his first steps that Halloween night. He didn't know what candy was, and had he known, my guess is he would have disliked getting out in a stroller in a terrible downpour to walk two blocks to the nearest house, just in the hopes people were there giving out candy. So not much Halloween happened here last year.
This year, we had a child who could walk around, was willing to hold on to an unwieldy orange plastic pumpkin and didn't mind the cold much given he was wearing a furry tiger costume that kept him warm in the chilly weather. My daughter looked cute in an elephant costume that matched her friend, Genevieve's, who was born only two days after her. Costumed up, now we just have to figure out where to go.
Our neighborhood has lots of houses, but most of them are under construction. There are some families who have lived here for some time, but with the downturn in the economy, our neighborhood of close to one hundred lots has sat largely empty for several years. The distance between potential trick-or-treat friendly houses was fairly long. We took our neighbors up on their offer to go to a neighborhood down the road in which her niece and family lived.
Six children including two babies, four parents and two grandparents and we took a while to get moving, but we eventually made it to our minivans and got to our candy-filled, friendly neighborhood full of happy, scary, spooky houses. And boy, was this a good neighborhood. There were strobe lights, haunting music, cobwebs, pretend fire in cauldrons bubbling with added witches brew smells wafting around. As adults, we were all impressed. I don't think my children noticed.
After meeting my neighbor's niece and her family we finally made it to our prime objective: candy collection. Okay, that was mommy's objective. My son doesn't know those little crinkly packages contain candy, but nonetheless, he was very interested in them and putting them in his pumpkin.
We headed to our first house and as the pack of kids were swarming in front of him, I explained he needed to say, "trick or treat" when he got to the door. He tried to repeat after me and then he headed up to the man at the door ... and walked right past him into his house.
The man and I both laughed. I explained this was my son's first house on his first time trick-or-treating. The man, who had three little boys inside, said he understood. After I fetched him and we moved along I realized why he went inside. At the start of the night, we first went to our neighbors house. We met there, went inside, met everyone, talked about costumes and then moved on. When we got to her niece's house and we repeated the same process of going in and meeting everyone. To my son, it must have made sense to keep up the current plan for house number three of the night.
The rest of the trick-or-treating was lots of fun. He got the hang of it and was both polite and outgoing. After about six houses, he would let go of my hand and walk up to the door by himself. One time, after coming down the steps and back to the driveway, he turned around and decided he wanted to go again. I don't know if he got more candy, but he came back a few minutes later.
The Big Boy Update: Holding on to the pumpkin. Not only did he do well with the whole trick-or-treating process, he also did an amazing job with his pumpkin. We asked him to hold on to the pumpkin at the start. He put it in the crook of his arm and never dropped it. When he got to houses, he would accept or select candy and put it into his bucket all by himself. After fifteen houses, we not only had he not put the bucket down, he wouldn't let you take it from him. I think he learned this from school. He is expected to carry in a purple bag every day to and from school. It is his responsibility to carry it. The first day of school you have to help, but by now, he doesn't want you to take his purple bag because it's his job. The pumpkin must have been his job too. He did eventually get tired though. He used one of his new words, "kare," which means "carry." When he started in on that, we knew the night of candy-collection fun had come to a close.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: The un-cycler. Toys are everywhere, but where does the baby want to be? Under my feet, at my desk, right when I'm writing a blog post. Okay, anytime I'm at the desk. She likes to press buttons on the UPS and turn it off. She's even gotten to the power button for the computer before I could stop her. One of her best tricks though is un-cycling. There's a little trashcan beside me that we put paper recycling in. She will sit at that trash can and make a complete mess of the recycling. I love it. Un-cycling keeps my computer safe from power button-happy fingers. Unfortunately, trash is only fun for so long.
Fitness Update: Five miles and my last run before the half marathon on Sunday. I may do some other exercising tonight though with Uncle Jonathan as he has a new fitness game for the Xbox we're going to try.
Someone Once Said: If heredity were not overwhelmingly more important than environment, you could teach calculus to a horse.
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