Halloween

Halloween 2006: Maybe I won’t have anything left to write about at the end of the week, but I wanted to send out a quick note about our first real trick-or-treating. The kids practiced in the house early in the day by walking up to each parent and saying “knock-knock”, then we’d say “Hello?”, and they’d say “trick-or-treat”, and we’d pretend to put a candy in their pumpkins. No one asked them to practice like this, they just invented the game themselves. When it came time to actually go out the kids were very excited and cooperative. Chloe was just bubbling over and couldn’t stop talking to the people who answered the door saying things like “I’m Ariel, the Little Mermaid. I have the movie too. And this is my crown”. Alex was pretty good about knocking on the door and saying “Trick-or-Treat” and “Thank you”, but other than that, he was his usual reserved self. Chloe practically ran from house to house and Alex was so busy taking in all the sites and playing with his costume and light stick that he walked very slowly. One of the neighbors said that her kids used to go down the whole main road and then by the end they were so tired that they couldn’t (or wouldn’t) walk home. I really wanted to avoid that, so we walked a few houses down passed the end of cul-de-sac, then back passed our cul-de-sac, at which point I said “do you want to go home and eat candy now, or do you want to go to more houses?”. They both wanted to go to more houses, so we went 4 houses down the other direction and 4 houses back. We gave them a count down (3 houses left, 2 houses left), and they didn’t even complain when we said were all done and it was time to go home to eat candy. I let them pig out on candy for quite a while. They picked out all the candy was colorful and had no chocolate to eat first, but they were so excited that they didn’t finish one piece of candy before they moved on to the next. In the end I think they each licked or nibbled about a dozen pieces of candy, which I think is great because it makes us about a dozen pieces closer to being a candy-free house. Every night before bed Alex and Chloe watch about 20-30 minutes of a cartoon to relax and mellow out. Tonight Chloe said she didn’t want to watch the “movie”, she wanted to go to bed. That has NEVER happened before. I guess all that excitement really got her tuckered out. I’m proud that she took responsibility for her own rest. And I’m proud that Alex was so brave to go up to all those strange houses, and get that close to all those people whom we did not know.