Trick-or-Treat

Halloween this year was completely awesome! I realize that I'm a serious slacker for blogging about this in November, but here I am.

We went to three different trick-or-treat festivities on two separate weekends, and although the first one ended up being on a cold, rainy, and dark evening and the second one almost resulted in a mom and grandma double-time smackdown of some older kids (and their parents) with no manners, not to mention some seriously long lines...Freyja was all about it this year, and her excitement made it great.

If you recall, last year we had a festive pumpkin outfit and a pea-in-a-pod ensemble which she wore while I walked her around the neighborhood while the older kids were trick-or treating. She was only 5 months old at the time and obviously clueless in regards to why she was dressed like a vegetable, but she was still super cute.

This year I picked a very adorable bumble bee suit for Freyja's costume. I even thought ahead and bought a size bigger so she could wear it again next year, if I can get away with it. What I didn't realize when I picked it out was that when it came time for her to wear it, she was going to understand exactly what it was.

We have a book called, Time for Bed, by Jane Dyer and illustrated by Mem Fox. It has some beautiful watercolors inside, and Freyja likes to point out the animal on each page...first by name, and then she makes it's "noise". She's particularly excited about the horse, cow, sheep, duck, dog, and cat. One of the lines in the book is, "It's time to sleep little bee, little bee. Yes, I love you, and you love me." I didn't think she had really grasped what a bee was yet because she was always quiet when I came to that page, but apparently I was wrong. When I put on her costume, she started yelling "Bee! Bee!" So, I took out the book, turned to the page with the bee, and she immediately pointed at it and said "Bee! Bee!" Pretty amazing stuff. I think it's so awesome how these little ones are learning so much and storing it away, and then one day they just decide it's time to use it. I wonder how long she knew what a bee was before she actually said anything?

I love that last photo. She's looks like she wants to tear the camera ot of my hand.

So, since we live in a city which overlaps with a second one, we went out on two different nights to trick-or-treat in the business district of each downtown area. On the night went to Bloomington it was rainy and cold, but Freyja didn't seem to mind. There weren't many kids out, but the event was still going on, so I pushed her in the stroller through the misty rain and we had fun anyway. On the night we went to downtown Normal, it was absolutely beautiful outside and not cold at all. It seemed like every child around here was there! So, the lines to get candy from different merchants or free food and drinks were quite long and the wait was making the kids stir-crazy. Freyja was pretty chilled out though...she seemed satisfied to check out all the different people and costumes, and was super happy when I let her eat her first lolly-pop. There was sticky stuff all over, but she loved it. On the actual night of Halloween, grandma and grandpa took Freyja around the neighborhood for door-to-door trick-or-treating while I relaxed at home, ready to hand out candy to the kids roaming the neighborhood.

What should Freyja's costume be next year? A fruit? An animal? Something off the wall? I guess we'll see...

I love Halloween! I'm totally excited that someday there will be parties, spooky cupcakes, pin the hat on the witch, bobbing for apples, and all kinds of fun stuff, but not yet...