Happy Halloween!

Heading to school for Costume Day on the Friday before Halloween. Parker was pretty into all of the decorations that people put up in our neighborhood, so we put up a few of our own this year. We started off small, but he was excited by our ghosts, spider webs, and spider! Here he is in his pirate costume...

Having his picture taken in his classroom.

Our pirate in the costume parade with his classmates.

Parker and Levi getting ready for all of our trick-or-treaters on Halloween. 

Levi absolutely loved playing with all of the little candy packages! I think he crawled around with a mini wrapped candy bar in his hand for quite a while before I finally pried it out of his little fingers.

Grammy found a perfect costume for Levi--jammies that look like a cowboy outfit! Considering that he was totally oblivious to the entire occasion, it's nice that we will be able to have a good pair of pj's for him to wear after the fact! He managed to keep his cowboy hat (which we got for Parker in Oaxaca, Mexico when he was 10 months old) on for about 30 seconds so we could snap this photo. I really should have cleaned the lasagna off of his face first, though...

Pirate Mommy and Pirate Parker

My mom and dad came over after dinner to celebrate Halloween with us this year--Grammy held down the fort for us and passed out candy while we were out trick-or-treating, while Grampy joined us and pushed Levi in the stroller. Our neighborhood gets super busy for Halloween--each street feels like a block party. There are people everywhere, and it is so easy to trick-or-treat up and down each street. This was the first year that Parker was really excited to go out trick-or-treating; we didn't have to twist his arm to get him to walk up to the front doors and knock and say trick-or-treat. There were a few houses that were a little too scary for him, so we just passed on those. He was perfectly content to do just a few blocks before heading home to "organize" his candy. Overall, I think Parker had a pretty fun Halloween this year.

A Happy Halloween!

This was definitely our best Halloween so far! Our friends Joel and Liza came over with their six-month old daughter Juliette, who was the snuggliest monkey I've ever seen. We stayed in our own neighborhood for trick-or-treating, and I must say that I was really, really impressed! This place was rockin'--massive amounts of trick-or-treaters (sometimes felt like mobs in the streets), crazy haunted houses and huge displays of lights and decorations. After trick-or-treating at the first three houses on our block, Parker exclaimed, "This is great!" At the most insanely decorated house in our neighborhood, he said, "I wish we could live here!" He never seemed scared by any of the decorations, although we knew better than to venture into any of the haunted houses with him. It was so cool seeing him have so much fun this year--he loved his costume and he walked up to each door with a "Trick-or-Treat!" and gave almost everyone a "Thank You!" Once we got home, he organized his candy into a "candy store" about five times.


Parker added a light saber to his Superman costume, calling it "mixy-mixy," which I think his variation on "matchy-matchy." He said he was "a little bit Supermanish and a little bit Star Warsish." Cool. Why not?

A Scary Halloween

Today Parker had a Halloween Party at school, and it was a little scary, although not because of any witches, ghosts, or bats. He started the day pretty excited to wear his Superman costume to class, but when he got there it turned out that all of the commotion and activity were a bit overwhelming for him. A lot of parents (and even some grandparents and younger siblings) stayed for the first half hour of class to take pictures and join in the general ruckus. A few of the older classes did a "costume parade" around the school, walking through each of the classrooms in their costumes. The whole thing was pretty chaotic, noisy, and busy, which in general just is not Parker's scene; I think it was actually made worse by the fact that I was there with him, because rather than just suck it up and deal with it, Parker really started holding on to me for comfort as he got increasingly uncomfortable. Finally, it was time for the parents to leave so that the kids could continue their regular school day--which means that it was also time for Parker to have a total emotional breakdown as I tried to break away from his nervous grip. The scene was what I had actually expected--but never happened--on his first day of school: lots of tears, red face, sobbing, pleas to come home with me, and clinging on to me for dear life. Luckily, one of his teachers saw what was happening and came over to nicely peel him off of me (as he struggled and sobbed), and redirected him her way as I made my way out the door. When I came back to pick him up at the end of class, his teacher said that Parker ended up being fine, and he did seem much more himself when we left class together. Hopefully this was just a temporary event and won't cause a lasting set-back in his preschool career, since things had been going so well up until today! At least Parker was still happy to wear his costume--he even wore it out to lunch this afternoon! So I think he'll still have fun trick-or-treating on Halloween...and dressing up as Superman whenever the mood strikes him.

Pumpkin Patching

We went to a cute, mellow pumpkin farm out in Fallbrook today to choose some Fall pumpkins. Parker had fun racing around through the "maze" of pumpkins in the wheelbarrow, and we brought home a nice variety of four fun pumpkins--one for each member of the family :)