Halloween Hooplas

This year was Laurel’s first real experience of Halloween, complete with costume, a glow in the dark jack-o-lantern bucket, pumpkin carving, and trick-or-treating.  Her adventure began on Saturday when our neighborhood hosted a tots Halloween party.  I had finally borrowed a costume for her two days earlier, so we were ready.  She made a very cute little bumblebee.  As often happens in our lives these days, though, we showed up for the party about 30 minutes before it ended.  Most everything was winding down and being cleaned up.  I don’t think Laurel noticed.  She didn’t really want to go inside to begin with.  I convinced her to go in, but she didn’t want to make any crafts or stick her hand into any gooey bowls.  She was content to eat a cracker, drink her juice, and watch the little dancing Frankenstein. 

We explained trick-or-treating to her, and her eyes grew wide when we told her that people would give her candy.  You must understand the context.  We don’t give Laurel juice except on special occasions, much less candy.  On the morning of Halloween, I said, “Today is Halloween!  Tonight you get to wear your bumblebee costume again and go knock on people’s doors.  And do you remember what they are going to give you?”

Her eyes again grew wide, and a huge smile of anticipation spread across her face as she exclaimed, “JUICE!” 

I laughed and said, “Well, you might not get juice, but you will get candy!”

“And juice?”

Our household had been busy in the days leading up to Halloween, so it turned out that at 4:00 on Monday afternoon, we still hadn’t carved our pumpkins.  Of course the thought occurred to me that Laurel is two and probably won’t remember if we skipped the whole thing.  But I felt like it was one of those things we should do.  So, we started into the project.  Jon and I quickly realized that this was one of those things we were doing more for us than for her when we kept asking her to stand back so she wouldn’t get hurt and then she eventually wandered off to play, while we tried to finish our carving in time to get supper on the table.  Eventually I called things to a halt so that I could feed Brynna and make supper.

By the time we left for trick-or-treating, we had a pumpkin mess on the kitchen floor, but no jack-o-lanterns on the porch.

(are you still reading this story?)

So…off we go to trick-or-treat.  Here are our two favorite moments from the night:

At one house the woman put a little bag of M&Ms in Laurel’s bucket.  As we were walking away, Laurel stared at those M&Ms and proclaimed (in a very loud voice), “M&Ms…POOP IN THE POTTY!”

A little while later she said she wanted to eat her candy.  We explained that we would wait until we got home.  She then exclaimed that when we got home, she wanted “Two M&Ms.  NO, 5 M&Ms!”  It will probably be the only time in her life that she will think we’re giving her a big treat by letting her eat 5 M&Ms from her Halloween candy stash.