Halloween

It's Halloween! A day of dressing up, taking a nice walk, and getting a lot of candy for your efforts. Not a bad way to spend a few hours.

Andres has been eagerly awaiting Halloween for about a month. They have been talking about Halloween at daycare, and his favorite new TV show is "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" (it's been in heavy rotation in our living room). He's also spent a lot of time talking about what he wanted to dress up as. Here were his ideas in chronological order:

Red bird
Woody (from Toy Story)
A flag on top of a castle (my personal favorite)
Blue bird

We went with a red bird for him and a blue bird for Celia (both made expertly by Natalia!). The costumes were pretty simple and had no overt commercial tie-ins, which was nice.

Halloween morning was a Sunday morning like any other--breakfast, cleaning up, some outside time, and then a nap for Celia and some hanging out with Andres. This morning he was talking a lot about Halloween and could not wait to put on his costume and go trick or treating. Eventually it was time to get into costumes and then into the car (we were heading to West Roxbury to meet some friends) and, as could be expected, Andres took a catnap.

Post-nap Andres was very crabby and a lot less enthusiastic about Halloween. Unfortunately for him, the plan was to meet his friend Abby (and parents Nicole and Lenny) and do some trick-or-treating along Centre Street in JP. We stuck to the plan, but both Natalia and I ended up pushing a relatively cranky red bird in the stroller for most of our walk. Celia was fine--she had taken a 3 hour nap earlier, and seemed very happy about being carried around. She also looked very cute in her blue bird costume. (Abby was a giraffe.)



Eventually he got out of the stroller and collected his own candy. Celia was getting heavy so she got a turn in the stroller too.



Cranky toddler aside, trick or treating on Centre was a lot of fun--most of the businesses were open and handing out candy, and there were a lot of other families walking about. This made for some interesting traffic jams in bizarre places (in the lobby of an Indian restaurant, coming out of a Verizon store, etc) but it was nice to see a wide range of ages, costumes, and faces as we walked along.

And Andres did not throw any fits; I don't want to make it sound like he was a total pill...I think he was both tired and overwhelmed by the crowds.

After a good walk we said a last Happy Halloween! to Abby and family and hopped in the car for a quick snack before heading to our second engagement of the day. Celia was good and hungry and Andres benefited from some quiet time too.



We all collected ourselves and then headed to Chestnut Hill for even more trick or treating with friend Mira (and her parents Neil and Ami) and a bunch of her cousins and friends. By this time Andres had fully woken up and realized that it was, in fact, Halloween--the day he had been looking forward to for some time--and began having a better time.



It was getting cold so we only did a quick walking tour of their neighborhood before heading back and getting some dinner (and watching the end of the Pats game). Andres played with Mira's toys while Celia crawled all over everything.

7:00 came up on us fast, and before everyone melted down (including me) we jumped back in the car and drove home...but not before stopping at Betty's house for a final trick or treat!



(Yes I was tackled there--sugar kicking in.)