Halloween Post Mortem

Halloween was a lot of fun at our house this year. Claire has reached an age where she can hold a concept in her head and think about it on her own. We tell her things once and she will bring them up to us later. Also, it seems that her concept of time is developing so that if you tell her that something is happening in "two sleeps", she will keep her own running countdown to an event.

As great as these skills are, they are also the ones that make my life difficult sometimes. Gone are the days where we could distract her out of a bad idea by saying "maybe later" and substituting a better idea in its place. If she decided she wants a glue stick (which is a very messy endeavor in this house), well, she isn't going to let the idea go unless you a) give her a glue stick or b) present her with a reason that she understands and will accept about why it isn't possible. Option B sound quite reasonable but the catch is that she has to understand and accept the reasons - "because it makes a big mess", "because we are about to have dinner" or "because I can't find it right now" are NOT good reasons for her. Anyway...I'm digressing.

For most of October, Claire knew that Halloween was coming. She talked about it once in a while and knew that she was going to be a witch but she didn't ask how long it was going to be till the big day. On Wednesday of last week I told her that Halloween was in two sleeps an it was at that point that she went into high excitement mode. I was out teaching a class on Thursday night but DH reported that when he told her it was time for bed she exclaimed "Hurray! I can't wait to go to bed because tomorrow is Halloweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeen!".

Jillian knew that she was going to get dressed up and go trick-or-treating. Unlike Claire, it didn't seem real to her until we actually put her into her black cat costume. Then, when she discovered that she had a tail, she was all for the occasion.

Claire's school doesn't observe Halloween but they did have "Black and Orange Day" on Friday. My mother bought them cute Halloween shirts and I got her a nifty hair elastic with a witch hat on it and she thought she was pretty spiffy going off to school like that. Here they are (they weren't in the mood for photography so this is the best I got):



While Claire was at school, I dressed Jillian up and took her to the mall trick-or-treating with a couple of her little friends. After her nap, I dressed her up again and took her to her babysitter's place for a short Halloween party. She really got into the spirit of the thing.

When Claire came home from school she wanted to go trick or treating immediately. It was a bit hard to convince her that she had to wait till after dinner before she could go and preferably it would be a little bit dark too. That being said, you can really motivate a kid to eat if you say "as soon as you are done your dinner, we'll go trick or treating".

We had great weather for the event. When I was a kid, I remember trick or treating in the rain at least once, in snow several times and definitely in snow pants a couple of times. Since we've had Claire, every single Halloween has been downright balmy. It's amazing really. Especially since last Wednesday it was 1 degree Celsius with a wind chill of -12 degrees (that's somewhere around 10 degrees Fahrenheit if you are on the imperial system).

When we got home the girls sat on the front step and had some treats:


Witch Claire making a decision (the turtleneck under her dress was much closer to the purple in her dress in real life).

Jillian chowing down (she didn't really stop and make a decision, she just wanted whatever her hand hit first):


They were both very good while we were out. They remembered to say "trick or treat" and "thank you" and didn't push other kids down in search of the next house with a porchlight on (it's amazing how many rude kids were out there). Jillian was hilarious. A couple of times people came to the door with lollipops in their mouth and Jillian would look at them, look at the stick in their mouth and say "what you eatin'?". One man dug all the way to the bottom of his huge bowl of treats just to get a lollipop for her.

After they had their first treat, I told them it was time they pose for a photo and they were nice enough to cooperate.


A witch and her familiar. Who could ask for cuter?

After the group shots I took photos of them by themselves. We thought it would be cute if Claire pretended to ride her broom:


When her turn was over, I let her go and started taking Jillian's pictures. When I turned my attention back to Claire, she was doing this:

Cleaning the porch. She did tell everyone that she was a good witch and not a bad one. I wonder if I can get her to do that indoors?