Baby’s First Halloween
Posted on November 1st, 2012
Yes, really.
Pea is five, and this is the first time we took her trick-or-treating. Why? Well, before two and it seemed kind of silly. After two, we lived in a loft downtown. Also, she was easily scared until recently, and this is the first year she really understood the holiday.
She made up for lost time.
The kid her teacher thinks is shy? Was running from house to house and jockeying for position with the older kids. When people did not answer their doorbells promptly enough, she would pound on their door. She stamped her feet. A couple of times, to our intense mortification,* she yelled, “HURRY UP!” She was great with wishing everyone a Happy Halloween. She was less great at unprompted thank yous. (She would exclaim to homeowners at intervals, “I’m getting a lot of candy!”)
She recognized a Nightmare Moon MLP jack-o-lantern and was so delighted. She pet all the dogs. She didn’t know the term “porch light” until last night, but she was a pro by the end, declaring this house or that one on or off limits, based on the porch light, regardless of the other decorations.
We were out for about an hour, starting when it was still light, and that meant we really didn’t collect much candy — there were a lot of people still at work when we started. But I’d steered her toward a very cute — and small — felt candy bucket, and perception is everything. It wasn’t full before she decided, “I have enough candies now” and we walked home.
The best part? No rain. Amazing!
*Mine. In fact, I spent pretty much the entire time in a state of mortification, which M thought was hilarious. I couldn’t believe that the manners I’d been working so hard to instill in her could be lost so quickly. But in retrospect, I didn’t like trick-or-treating much when I was a kid, either, and as soon as I could, I opted to stay home and pass out candy instead.
I love it! But yes, it is amazing how much gets lost in the heat of the moment. With younger kids they revert to a near-complete inability to speak at all.
My town has a strange (to me) tradition of all the kids telling jokes to get their candy, so the transactions each take a bit of time. But my n’hood has a tradition of getting out the fire pits and being out on the porches all night, so it balances. We had hundreds of trick or treaters, finally ran out of candy and shut down.
Best joke all night: Four little boys (5 to 6 y.o.s) all dressed as 20′s gangsters, the youngest lisps: “How many ganstas does it take to frow a man down da stairs?” And then they all throw up their hands and go “None! I swear he fell!” Which, given the local mafia history, was pretty darned hilarious.
That is awesome! Those kids are fabulous! And I love the idea of kids telling jokes. What a great tradition.
My husband took our little almost 2 year old last night, and neither of them were that impressed. Maybe we should just wait until 5 too.
and yay, so glad you’re doing the NaNoWriMo too!
I am so excited to start! (I finished editing someone else’s novel today, so I get to write – yay!)
Jacob has never been big into trick-or-treating. This year he wanted to go, last year we stayed home. A couple of years he’s lasted 8 minutes. He’s already decided that 12 is the cutoff age, so next year will be our last year. All in all, I’ve gotten off easy in this aspect of parenting.
You are lucky. I’m just not a big holiday person, and Halloween kind of pushes me out of my comfort zone. It was fun watching Pea enjoy herself, though. I think 12 was the cut-off in my family, too, but I was just grateful to get to stay home and hand out candy.