Halloween

LB went trick-or-treating for the first time this year!! It was an odd place to do it, and not because it was so damn hot. Half the houses had candy sitting in a bowl on their porch. The other half had people sitting outside to hand out candy.

What happened to ringing a doorbell and saying "trick or treat"? It wasn't exactly the experience I had hoped for LB. I just hope he doesn't get confused next year when he has to ring doorbells... aw, who am I kidding, he probably won't remember this anyway.

Hubby stayed home with JC to "hand out candy", which I guess means give the entire bag to the first group of trick-or-treaters... who happened to be the kids next door to us (no lie). Now I know I'm not supposed to care what people think of me, and I'm moving away soon anyway, but it didn't sit well with me that he didn't want to hand out candy so he just gave it all to the first kids to the house, and that those kids were ones we knew. What about using it as a way to show kindness to our neighbors we DON'T know? WTF? Besides, it's Halloween- adults are supposed to give out candy to kids. I kind of felt responsible for ruining part of the rest of the kids' Halloween since we had no candy. I remember those houses and it was a bummer.

And the afternoon leading up to the big event wasn't too great either. It seemed like nobody in the house gave a sh!t about having a good Halloween except for me. Maybe I'm just more into the holidays than Hubby and the kids, but it was really frustrating, because I wanted LB to love Halloween like I did when I was a kid. But it was really difficult to do that when he wouldn't sit still to size his costume (which was ridiculously large for 18-24 month size), Hubby refused to get into the spirit at all citing he had a lot of housework to do (although he spent a lot of time on the internet instead), and JC just couldn't eat enough. Even our pumpkin sat on the counter uncarved until an hour before we left to go trick-or-treating.

It was fun when we finally got out there, but I learned a lot of lessons from this Halloween:

1. Return a costume or get another if it doesn't fit. What a pain in the ass having to cut the legs and arms off to make them the correct length.

2. Don't count on Hubby to help. Sorry Hubby, but even though I expect you pitch in when we're both home and the kids both need attention, I know sometimes you won't, so I'm just going to give up. And you "helping" by cutting the armbands too short and ruining them made it worse. Next year, I'd like to not spend fifteen minutes crying over stress.

3. USE THE WAGON. Granted, this year we had packed our wagon so we didn't have it, but next year it will be invaluable. Going at LB's glacial speed made for a long night.

4. Dress up to take the kids out. I didn't have a costume this year (didn't want to load my suitcase with crap I didn't need), but it will be fun next year when we're all dressed up. Sidenote, make sure my costume is easy, since most of the time of preparing will be spent on the kids.

Definitely not the Halloween I was expecting. Yes, it was adorable watching LB walk around in his little ninja costume, sucking on a chocolate Tootsie pop and waving bye-bye to people. But I'm used to leading up to a holiday and building excitement. This Halloween had no excitement, just stress.

Better luck next year.