Halloween - The Grand Event

Halloween morning we gobbled down our breakfast and rushed over to the library for their Halloween story time. The class was held at 10:30am (as is regular story time), which is a real challenge for me. I can't ever get us there on time. We are definitely not like most people where our day starts around 7am. In our house, we get up at 9am, are usually finishing breakfast by 10am, and realistically, can't get somewhere on time unless it starts at 11:30am. So, like usual, we were late to class. Sorry, Claire Bear.

 

Claire doesn't care too much for the story reading, but she loves dancing around to the children's music and looks forward to getting a stamp on her hand every time. She actually insists on getting one on each hand. :) After story time they had tables set up for all of the kids to decorate little Halloween books. It was a great idea and Claire was in heaven. The decoration of choice? Stickers of course! Claire is obsessed with stickers. Usually, she puts all of them on top of each other, but this time she did a great job of spreading them around the page. She could have sat there all morning with the stickers if I let her, but he had to get on with our day.

We hurried upstairs and did a little trick-or-treating, which made Claire very excited. This was just the beginning of her sugar high.

After that, we rushed over to Claire's other library class to catch the tail end of their Halloween program. A few minutes later, we were back in the car driving to our next destination...Erik's office. That morning I sent Erik to work with some candy so he would be prepared for Claire's trick-or-treating. When we arrived, she knocked on his door and said "trick-or-treat"! Earlier that week, I told her that is what a strawberry says in hopes that she would repeat it later. She was very happy with all of the candy she was getting and by this time (around noon) she had already eaten at least five or six pieces.

That concluded our busy morning. Claire took her nap and then we got ready for the official trick-or-treating event that evening. It was one thing after another and by dinner time, she probably had at least 10 pieces of candy. That's a lot for such a little one! Silly me; I did not anticipate the attitude she would soon reveal.

~ commentary by Claire Bear (meaning muah) ~

(right) "Okay Mom. I gave you a cute smile, lets get this show on the road!"

(left) "Seriously. The first one wasn't good enough? Fine, this is all you get."

(left) "Mom, I want to hold my bag just like you!"

(right) "This weird skeleton head isn't going to bite my finger off is it?"

 

(left) "This is my cousin Soren. He's showing me what to do."

(right) "I wanted to push Vivian's stroller and help her go

trick-or-treating but Mommy wouldn't let me 'cause I was too slow. Sorry Viv."

(left) "Soren, I don't see anyone inside. Ring the doorbell again."

(right) "Okay, I'll try knocking. Maybe they'll come to the door this time."

(left - temper tantrum #1) "Mommy! Why can't I push Viv's stroller!"

(right - temper tantrum #2) "I don't even remember what I did, but I got in trouble for something."

(left) "Hmmm. This house looks a little scary."

(right) "I guess I'll be brave and go knock on the door anyway."

(left) "Yes! More candy!"

(right) "I can't believe Mommy's letting me eat all of this candy. This is awesome!"

As you can see, Claire had many ups and downs on Halloween. There were around five temper tantrums / crying episodes due to not letting her push Viv's stroller, trying to make her say 'thank you', falling face first on a drive way, not obeying, and probably a couple of other things. I think she finally crashed from her sugar high and it was definitely a traumatic experience. Thankfully, overall she seemed to have fun, but she sure had her moments. This night made me think extra hard about how I need to prepare this holiday season.

We hope you all had a fun and safe Halloween. Our little strawberry and bumble bee certainly did.