Trick-or-Treat

So...Halloween.

I feel like I talked about this whole holiday a lot leading up to the main event, including posting pictures of our decorations and Brigid's costume, so anything I have to say now may be a bit anti-climactic.

But, when has that ever stopped me from talking before, right?

The kid, I think, had mixed emotions about the whole process of trick-or-treating. On one hand, there were strangers. That she had to walk toward. And maybe even interact with a little bit. On the other hand, there was candy. And Brigid does like her candy.

So, she compromised...

She wouldn't walk up to anyone's house without holding my hand (a practice I fully supported, by the way), and she wasn't too keen on letting go of my hand, even to take a piece of candy when offered, but she still managed to figure out a way to grab the candy with the same hand her bucket was hanging from and flip it back toward the bucket, all without losing a single piece. It was a masterful performance. I will never again have to worry about my toddler's dexterity, I think.

I couldn't get her to say trick-or-treat, or thank-you, or Happy Halloween, or even hello and good-bye to anyone along the way. In fact, I don't think she opened her mouth once in all of the 10-15 houses that we visited, although I was at least able to get her to wave bye-bye to people by the end. And I'm pretty sure that's just because she thought she should probably do something nice for all of the people who were giving her free candy.

When we headed back to our own house after awhile, Brigid loved seeing our decorations all lit up in the dark, but she hated the animatronic jumping spider that Steve set on several unsuspecting children over the course of the evening. In fact, she hated it to the point that at the end of the night, when he'd set it off, our kid was the only one who screamed.

We figured she was probably about over the whole Halloween spectacle by that point, anyway, so Steve took her in to watch It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown to make it up to her, while I finished up with the trick-or-treaters.

(My neighborhood is apparently THE PLACE to trick-or-treat in the area, because we must have had at least 300 kids come by over the course of 2 1/2 hours. I mean, we have a lot of kids in our neighborhood and all, but we don't have THAT many...)

Then Brigid went to bed, and we took down all of the Halloween decorations so I could start decorating for the real holidays.*

THE END.

*I kid, I kid! I love Halloween, and I do consider it a real holiday, I promise. I just really, really, really love Christmas decorations.