Halloween 2012

Every year that Eddie's been old enough to participate in Halloween activities, my mom has been in town.  Some years it's because she wants to be up here and other years (like this one) it's because I need reinforcements to help me with all the madness of the sugar coated holiday.  Since it was on a Wednesday and I needed to chaperone the daycare's field trip to downtown, have someone to pass out candy at the house, AND take Eddie around the neighborhood, I needed another adult.

The day started with getting Eddie dressed in his Spider Man costume.  The costume section at Target didn't have any super hero outfits left in his size so I found one in the Spider Man section of the toy department.  (It's weird to me that there are whole dedicated sections like that.)  It's a good thing it fits because I didn't get it out of the package until that morning.

He wore his costume to daycare, where they had a party and ate a Jack-o-lantern pizza.  I went to school and worked on my data (collating and plotting it...ug) and then at 1:30 pm my mom picked me up to go to lunch.  We ate at Konditorei, an Austrian place that has amazing soups, pastries, and tortes.  The beef goulash we had was crazy delicious.  As was the strawberry Danish and coffee I had for dessert...

After eating, my mom dropped me off at Cassie's so I could chaperone the daycare's field trip to the downtown trick-or-treat trail (#1).

The complete costume.

As every year, it was insane with strollers, parents, and sugar-crazed and sugar-dazed kids everywhere.  My mom considered joining us but instead decided to go pick up some cheap pizzas at Little Caesar's and go home to chop up some veggies and melon for us to have as a quick dinner when we got home.  She met us at 4:20 pm at the bank parking lot to take us home.  Eddie didn't have much candy in his bucket because he ate nearly every piece he got in real time.  Sheesh.  I felt like a loser parent for saying, "Okay, no more candy until we get home and you eat some pizza for dinner."  Like that's any better.

I got each of us to eat a few bites of "real food" before our friends, Isaac and Emily and their mom, came over at 5 pm to go trick-or-treating (#2) around our neighborhood.

Eddie and Isaac, AKA Spider Man and Mario.  Whenever we told them to smile for a picture, we'd have them say something like "candy!" instead of the typical "cheese!"  Once I told them to say, "high fructose corn syrup!" and Isaac (who is possibly the sweetest little boy ever) asked me to repeat it because he didn't know what to say.  Hahaha.

The kids had to go to their dad's house that night at 6 so we only went to about 10 houses with them.  We were the first ones out and about since it was still light out.  The rule was that they could only knock on houses with either the porch light on or lit pumpkins on the porch and they could only knock 3 times.  This time I got smart and told Eddie he could have one piece of candy and then 5 houses later he could have another.

Eddie and me in our neighborhood during trick-or-treating #2

My mom got no kids at the house until after we got home.  We ate some more food and Eddie helped pass out candy to the few groups of kids who came to our door.

It started to rain just as it was getting dark.  It felt so late to me with the busy-ness of the day and the darkness outside.  But it was only about 6:30 pm, too early to start Eddie's bath.  So after playing with the dogs for a bit and eating some more candy, Eddie and I went outside in the light rain to move out pumpkins out to the driveway.  I hoped that more people would see them and come to the house.  Years ago I planted a potato bush near the driveway, hoping it'd get big enough to give the front of our house a bit of privacy from the zillions of people who bike and walk past our house all day long (the path to the park is next to our driveway).  Well, it worked and it does block the view to our front porch pretty well.

I asked Eddie if he wanted to go trick-or-treating (#3) one last time, this time in the dark.  Of course he said yes! So we went inside to get his candy bucket, a flashlight, and my witch hat and off we went.  We hit up a few houses we'd missed earlier and walked around the edge of the neighborhood to visit a friend's house (they weren't home).

At many of the houses Eddie was more interested in piles of rocks/soil/sand, sticks, or rocks stuck in the ground.  "But Mama, I just want to dig up one!"

It was lightly raining the whole time and neither of us minded.  Just as we were about the enter the park to walk through it back home, it started to pour.  I asked Eddie if he wanted me to carry him to get home faster and he said no.  Instead he just stood there, contemplating the rain and looking up at it, flinching when big drops landed in his eyes.  Eventually he decided it was time to go home so off we went.  Halfway through the park, as I was holding my sweet boy's hand in the pouring rain the water began to seep through the seam on my hat.  My face became a waterfall.  It wasn't cold or uncomfortable out and I was enjoying being with only Eddie in the dark.  After the madness of the day, I really enjoyed that quiet "us" time, holding his sweet, wet, sticky little hand.

Weird--next year we'll be living on the coast in a relatively rural place.  Dave tells me that parents generally drive their kids from mini-neighborhood to mini-neighborhood.  So I anticipate a much calmer Halloween from here on out.  Whew.  =)

And for reminiscing sake:

2008. Dave and I were a pair of electrons. I was down spin and he was up spin and together we were a perfectly matched pair. Just like in real life. 

2009. Three Bowers at the pumpkin patch.  Eddie was only 2.5 months old and I left for a Soil Science conference the next day.

2010.  Eddie was a (sad) farmer and we only did downtown trick-or-treating because my mom, Eddie, and I left for a conference on the 31st.

2011.  Us Bowers were characters from Peter Pan, Uncle Edward was Sherlock Holmes, and Auntie Jennifer was a lady bug.  This year we did downtown stuff , only a few houses in the neighborhood, and went to a party.