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The Trick or Treat Post
Halloween was a BLAST. I’m kinda worried about Christmas now. It’s a good thing we’re going out of town because I do not think I can top this last week’s fun with a tree and some presents. I loved Halloween this year. We did so much and Baby Bug’s little firecracker personality really shot my fun quotient to the stars.
I decided to invite my nieces to trick-or-treat with us this year. Firstly because I looooove my nieces and secondly because my neighborhood rocks. The ratio of candy to kids is significantly heavier on the candy side. People stand at their doors calling out to you to come and take handfuls. I don’t know if this is because everyone and their Aunt is on a no-sugar-no-carb diet or if there really aren’t that many kids trick or treating. Either way, we ended up with more candy than any of us really deserve.
I didn’t get very many pictures of us trick or treating because I was way too busy being a mom. Also, I hate taking night photos. I’ve never mastered the flash (has anyone, really?) and the new mini-van camera hangs up so long for each shot, all the kids were three blocks away by the time the shutter actually clicked.
I think that’s my only night shot. Oh well. It was fun fun fun.
Baby Bug made me so proud. She marched up to each door with her cousins and shouted “twick or tweet” as loud as her little girl voice could go. There was absolutely no way anybody was going to ignore her cuteness. When they let her choose, her usual persnicketiness kicked in and she hovered there for several seconds looking for the green candy bar, I’m sure. Of course there were never any green candy bars but we did end up with quite a few peanut m and m’s. I’m pretty sure she chose them because there is a picture of a green m and m on the package. Too bad she can’t eat peanuts until she turns three. Oh well. More for me.
If that wasn’t enough to make my proud-mom heart puff up bigger than my head, Baby Bug even said thank you all by herself with hardly any prompting from me. Well, probably every fourth house I had to jab her with my elbow but usually she heard Grandma and Auntie yelling at her cousins and got it out pretty quick.
What really killed me was when one woman, who was kneeling down to to Baby Bug’s height, said bye to her. After blinking a couple times, Baby Bug yelled “BYEEEEEE!” really loud right back at the woman’s face. I think it surprised everyone. She is not shy, my Bug. Not shy at all.
My mom says I was like that too when I was little. It’s hard to believe since I was known as “the girl who never talks” from second grade until college. I don’t know what happened to make me so shy. I’m certainly not shy now. I wonder if Baby Bug will be like me and lose this outgoing personality she has now. I kind of hope not. She really is a kick in the pants
We ended the night with some homemade chili and some box-mix cupcakes. I really wanted to make these but I’m too much of a wus to try baking from scratch. I know, I know. I’ve heard it a thousand times from Jenn that box mixes suck but I’m a mom in a hamster wheel, remember? I can’t think that far in advance. One of these days I’ll try it. If only to make “hemajang mouths”.
My family decided to spend the night instead of driving an hour an a half to their own homes. Everybody was pretty tired. This is all fine and good but I don’t have any extra beds in my house. So that meant Gramma got the couch and everybody else got the floor.
My house was wall to wall blankets and bodies last night. It was like a big slumber party. Slumber parties on Halloween night are really really fun until five the next morning when the cat wakes Baby Bug up and then we have to spend the next three hours trying to be quiet without the aid of Sesame Street.
Thankfully, my niece Rapunzel woke up too. So it wasn’t just me and Bug killing time until the other’s work up. We decided trying to be quiet was a drag so we took a moonlight morning walk the doughnut store and watched the sunrise on the beach. That’s really something everyone should do. Doughnuts are good for the soul (and thighs).
I really cherish these times with my oldest niece. She’s growing up so fast. This morning with her left over purple hair and make-up she really seemed like a window into the future.
She’s only nine but in this picture she looks like she’s seventeen, working at Virgin Records with five tatoos and she doesn’t talk to me anymore. I don’t want that to ever happen. I think I would die inside if she stopped talking to me.
I don’t want my little girls to ever grow up. (Super Chic too but she was sleeping)
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Big Fun for Little Bug
When did Halloween start being so fun? I’m supposed to hate Halloween! Laugh if you want but I have had a deep fear of vampires since I was eight years old. I watched some dumb movie at my neighborhood friend’s house down the street and I’ve had nightmare ever since. Sometimes still to this day, I will pull the covers up to my neck because I hate the feeling of cold air on my exposed neck. Don’t even get me started on how much I can’t stand scary commercials on tv. I’ve been known to just plain not watch tv for the whole month of October.
But now? I love Halloween! Maybe I should say I love the celebration of harvest and fall. I have fallen in love with pumpkins. They are so pleasing. What’s not to love! They are round and orange (one of my favorite colors) and you can carve faces into them. And then, the best part: you can throw them away! I love that. I really don’t like boxes of seasonal stuff that I have to find a place for. Ask my family. Not having a place for everything is almost as scary to me as my neck being exposed on a dark night.
Baby Bug and I went to the pumpkin patch on Saturday. It was SO fun! I know it was kind of expensive but I shelled out twenty bucks and we did everything. We rode the wagon, we pet the sheep and the goats and a funny little hairy pig in the petting zoo. We ate shaved ice (green snow) and watched a pumpkin being blasted out of a cannon to a hill far away and smash into a thousand pieces. We ran around the corn maze that wasn’t really a maze but more of a labyrinth and examined every single dirt clod, rock and twig. It was the best thing for us. It was just so nice to be outside breathing air that doesn’t smell like a campfire for a change.
Of course we couldn’t leave without a pumpkin, even though we already have three at home from my Dad’s garden. I told myself not to buy another pumpkin but they called to me with their curly stems and big round tummies. I couldn’t just leave them there to rot. So we left with a big fat round one.
On the way to the car I had to carry Baby Bug on one hip and the pumpkin on the other. “It’s a good thing Mommy has big hips,” I said to Baby Bug as I hoisted her up. Then being the minor bird that she is Baby Bug said, “Good thing Baby has hips.” That gave me a laugh. She’s so funny. She copies everything I say. I should record her one of these days. I think I could get her to say the Gettysburg address if I wanted her to.
That night we carved one of our pumpkins and I introduced Baby Bug to the concept of trick or treating. She’s eaten cookies almost every day of her life but candy is a foreign concept. Let me just say, she caught on pretty quick. I don’t need to worry about her not knowing what to do with her special knitted pumpkin purse that Bethany Actually made for her. I think by Wednesday she will be showing other kids how it’s done.
If spending a whole day at the pumpkin patch and then learning about candy wasn’t spoiling her enough, I decided to take her to the big mall on Sunday for their annual “Pumpkins and Pancakes” breakfast. It’s such a great event. For the cost of admission (which I don’t know what is because we have connections and got in free) you get a gourmet breakfast (catered by the same restaurant who catered my wedding), fun dancing time with a real dee jay (think chicken dance and the limbo), fun with a bazillion other kids in costumes and CRAFTS!!!
Baby Bug and I LOVE crafts. I was worried she wasn’t big enough to really participate, since all the other kids were twice her size and there were open containers of glue and paint and gooey stuff, but she was fine. She sat right there next to the big kids and painted and made her own owl puppet as if she did this sort of thing every day.
One mother turned to me and said, “Do you get a lot of comments from people about how small she is and how she can walk already?”
“Sure,” I answered. “But that’s not nearly as fun as the looks I get when she says the whole alphabet and then counts to fourteen.” Moms love me when I tell them that. I’m such a show off. But she can. She’s a nut like that.
I’m sure I’ll pay for this someday when Baby Bug is the littlest in her class and she comes crying home to me because all her friends can play on the monkey bars but she can’t reach them because the ladder is too low. I know because I was the littlest one once. It’s not all fun and games being small.
I thought Baby Bug would be so afraid when we went to the big event at the mall. There was loud music and big kids everywhere in scary costumes. I thought she’d be clinging to me for dear life, afraid of being stepped on. But nope. She wanted to be right there in the middle of it all. She’s like a chihuahua, she doesn’t even know she’s little.
Phew! I need to stop having so much fun. These posts are taking me forever to write.
