trick or treat!

Posted on November 1, 2014 by Cindy

This year for Halloween, Catie decided that she didn’t want to be a dinosaur, which she’s been pretty much every year since she was two. She got a lab coat from science camp, so she decided she wanted to be a scientist.

Lucy, like pretty much every other little girl (and some boys) in America, wanted to be Elsa. I decided that was fine with me.

(I’m not sure why the pool noodle was involved.)

Lucy had actually not decided what she wanted to be up until the last minute: she kept going back and forth between “Princess Peach!” (referring to the poofy pink princess dress that my mom made her), and “Elsa! No, Anna! No, I mean Elsa!” Three year-olds are infuriatingly indecisive. So on Thursday, my mom went to Wal-mart and bought both Elsa and Anna. We figured we’d let her pick, and then return the other one. Turns out, she loved both, because after we got back from trick-or-treating, she wanted to be Anna.

So, ok, fine. Now we have bonus costumes.

It was pretty funny that she was very clear about, “I not real Elsa, I just Lucy-Elsa.” Got it. Thanks for the clarification, sweet girl.

Catie had initially been resistant to the idea of Halloween at all. She had said she would dress up, but she wanted to stay home with my mom and hand out candy.

She has important scientific discoveries to work on, you know.

I reminded her of the one neighbor’s house who set up their backyard like a spooky haunted house, which she loved last year. She said she’d walk with us, just to go see that house, but that was all. No trick-or-treating for her.

(Side note: that dude gives out FULL SIZE candy bars. His wife said he has a storage unit for all of his haunted house props for the rest of the year because they don’t have room for it in their garage. He’s either a huge Halloween enthusiast, or a little nuts. Either way, it was amazing.)

Of course, by the 2nd house, Catie was helping Lucy up to the door, and she was totally into it. I’m glad I made her bring a bag, because girl got a LOT of candy.

When we got home, I was thinking how weird it is that Catie wasn’t a dinosaur this year. Then she went into the bathroom to change, and came out like this.

“I’m a scientist who had an accident in the lab!”

Yeah, thaaaat’s more like it. (And kudos to Children’s Place for their costumes, because I bought that dinosaur costume in 2012, and this is its 3rd year making an appearance.)

Last year, Lucy only trick-or-treated maybe the first 5 houses before she got overwhelmed and my mom took her home. This year, she trooped all over the neighborhood like a champ. It was great.

(Well: edit that. She made Chris carry her a little bit toward the end. But she did most of it all on her own.)

This is technically Dave’s weekend to have the kids, but there isn’t a whole lot of trick-or-treating to be done in an apartment complex. So I volunteered to take them out – because I love Halloween – and then dropped them off after we were done. I knew they were pretty well over-sugared by the time I dropped them off, and he texted me today that they didn’t settle down and go to sleep until sometime after 10:30. Which sounds about right. I’m glad they’re both old enough to really enjoy the holiday, though.

And then I got to go home and look at all my friends’ kids in their adorable costumes when I got home. Someone said Halloween and the first day of school are the best days to be on Facebook, and I totally agree.

And now it’s November. How weird is that?

Halloween wrap-up

Posted on November 1, 2011 by Cindy

I could not seem to get a single photo of my two girls together, but here’s how Halloween went down.

Catie the T. Rex.

And Lucy the baby leopard.

(If that outfit looks familiar, it’s because I’m a fan of recycling.)

Last night was cold and rainy, but we lucked out and the rain let up for about a half hour. It was just long enough for Catie to run around to almost every house on our street and get all the candy she could grab. I wore Lucy in the Baby Bjorn, and she smiled at every zombie, monster, and witch that we passed.

Pretty accurate representation. I love it when they’re too little to understand that anything is supposed to be scary or spooky.

The weather seemed to keep a lot of kids from coming out. We have so much leftover candy today that I think we’re probably all going to be diabetic before Thanksgiving. Oy.

But we had a fun night, although Catie was bouncing off the walls on a sugar high until almost 11:00 p.m., which was considerably less fun. And then Lucy decided to be wide awake, happy, and chit-chatting until almost 1 a.m. So mama has a little bit of a Halloween hangover today, even though I haven’t had a drop of alcohol in weeks. Hopefully the tiny leopard and T. Rex that live in my house will ease up on me tonight and let me recover.

Candy Heaven

Posted on October 28, 2010 by Cindy

Catie’s daycare is having a Halloween party on Friday afternoon. All the kids dress up in their costumes, they have a “parade” (read: they march in a circle around the outside of the building), and the parents all come to take a million pictures. It sounds like fun. I saw on the door to Catie’s classroom there was a sign-up sheet to bring food for the party, and since most of the options involved cooking or a lot of preparation, I signed up for “Halloween-oriented treat.” Right. Candy. I can do that.

I considered just buying a bag of something and calling it good, but I had to buy Halloween candy for our neighborhood kids anyway, and there are only 12 kids in Catie’s class. So I bought some festive tiny paper sacks and filled each of them up with a variety of treats. Catie helped me distribute the candy evenly among the bags, it was a fun little project for us. We even made an extra bag for her teacher.

One of the things that I bought – which, if I’m being totally honest here, I mainly bought for me, not for the Halloween party or for the trick-or-treaters this weekend – was a big bag of Nerds candy. I love Nerds. This bag was made up of tiny boxes of grape and strawberry flavors. My favorites.

So while we were setting up the treat bags, I opened a little box of Nerds for myself. Catie asked if she could try them. I said sure, she held out her hand, and I shook a few of them out of the box into her palm.

As soon as she put them in her mouth, she got this really weird, sort of far-away look on her face. I thought maybe it was too sour for her and she’d want to spit them out.

Me: Do you like them?

Catie: *nodding*

Me: It’s not too sour for you, is it?

Catie: (in a hushed, almost reverential tone) This is the best candy I’ve ever eaten in my whole life.

So apparently she likes the sour stuff, just like her mommy.

She asked if she could have her own mini-box of Nerds. Since I had wolfed down mine already, I gave her one, and she took off upstairs with it. I knew Dave was taking a nap upstairs, but I didn’t think anything about it.

Catie came downstairs a few minutes later. “I put some of da Nerds in Daddy’s mouth while he was sleeping to share them with him. Was that nice?”

I told her that yes, sharing is very nice, but it’s usually a good idea to wait until the person is awake. I was a little worried that Dave would choke in his sleep, so we went upstairs to check on him. He was awake, he said that he had been sleeping, obviously with his mouth open, because he woke up to Catie shoving candy in his gaping maw.

This is around the part where I died laughing. What makes it even funnier is that Dave doesn’t even like Nerds. He isn’t into sour candy at all.

Oh well. I guess for now, the Willy Wonka candy people can rest easy knowing that they just got at least one brand new fan this Halloween season.

Halloween round-up

Posted on November 2, 2009 by Cindy

Forgive the quick entry, I only have a few minutes to type this up.

1. My in-laws are coming today! Catie is super-excited and keeps saying, “Grandma and Grandpa Roger are coming to see ME!” With her hand pressed to her chest for extra “ME!” emphasis. Yes, sweetie, they are. And now excuse Mommy while she panics and tries to clean the whole house from top to bottom.

2. I’m not doing NaBloPoMo this year. I thought it was fun in previous years, but with the visit from my in-laws and my entire family coming for Thanksgiving, there’s just no way on earth that I’m going to have time.

3. Halloween was so much fun! We went over to Cat & Tony’s neighborhood so the kids could trick-or-treat together. Catie had so much fun getting to hang out with her cousins, I think she’ll be talking about it until next Halloween.

And since I have to get to my last-minute frantic clean-up-a-thon, here are some of my favorite pictures from Halloween. The whole set is here.