I’m not really big into celebrating holidays…at least not in the “I have to decorate everything, come up with elaborate costumes, and buy everything I’m told makes the season” kind of way. I try to celebrate holidays for their meaning, not for the consumerism aspects. Regardless, Halloween isn’t something I’ve really done much of. As a kid, we lived out in the middle of the country and that, combined with our poor night vision, prevented us from really doing the “dress up and walk around to as many houses as you can to get as much candy as you can” thing. We did get dressed up and enjoyed doing so, but my mom would drive us around to trick-or-treat at the houses of family and friends. Now that I have a child and live in an actual neighborhood, I’m scared…I still have poor night vision, which makes walking around in the dark an anxiety-filled event. Regardless, Daniel wanted to go trick-or-treating last night. His aunt Bridget had purchased a cute monkey costume for her unborn child and let Daniel borrow it for this Halloween. As we were headed home from daycare, I realized that I had not acquired a candy receptacle of any sort, so I stopped by the grocery store to see if they had one…they didn’t. If you look closely at the picture, the “bag” he’s carrying with candy in it is his orange hat, complete with tassled ball on the top. 🙂
I think he liked getting out and getting candy, but he’s still really shy. He was excited to ring the doorbell at the first house, but then faded back into me as the door opened. He said all the right things, with prompting, and was overall very cute. The 5 houses we visited consisted of 2 elderly couples, 1 elderly woman, and 2 younger couples. I think they were all very understanding that he was shy. Oh, and afraid of dogs, so he’d move back behind my leg if he heard a dog barking in the house.
As we were leaving the second house (at the far end of the block), two older kids dressed as scary movie characters (Scream mask and Jason/hockey mask) were walking up the driveway to the same house. Daniel said “there people” and asked me to pick him up. When we got down to the next house (4 or 5 houses away), I put him back down in the driveway. He said “pick me up, it scary.” I convinced him that the other kids were gone and that it wasn’t scary any more, so he said “it okay, it not scary anymore.” After visiting the fifth house, he said “let’s go home, I all done”, so we went home and had dinner. I think he enjoyed it…
