Halloween 2011

Original Halloween intros are so hard to come up with, so here is a blog post about Halloween.

Last year we dressed the boy up as a kangaroo and took him to a neighborhood trunk or treat. No kids came to our trunk and no one seemed to know what he was supposed to be (“Is he a deer?” “No ma’am, deer don’t carry their young in their stomach.”). It rained and afterwards no one came to our house.

This year Halloween was interrupted by my family’s return from China on the 28th. They are still dealing with the time change and don’t seem to be in the mood to party.

This year I took the boy to the same neighborhood party on Saturday. He was too cranky to put on his dragon costume. There was a boy dressed as werewolf and a girl dressed as a skull-faced jester (a surprisingly common costume this year) that freaked him out to the point that I couldn’t put him down. 

He finally played a few games, won himself a thing of bubbles, which he loved once we got home.
Sunday was devoting entirely to battling first and second hand jet lag.

Monday started as a fairly normal day. We went to the library, which was not as Halloweeny as one would expect, and to the store which was already out of Halloween candy.

At first, when I told Grant about trick or treating, he said he didn’t want to go. But it only took one group of kids interrupting dinner to get him thinking about nothing else.

We dragoned him up, and him and I set off, taking turns holding the nose out of his face.

I felt a little bad taking my not-quiet two year trick or treating. We’ve never giving him any candy so he had no idea what any of this stuff was. People could tell I was a bad parent, either because I would let this way too young a child eat all this candy or I was using him to score candy for myself.

I tried to assuage this guilt by making Grant talk as much as possible. This was extra hard because the things he’s good at saying (“thank you”, “Hello”) are all in Chinese. He got plenty of practice though and after the first street he was good enough to be cute.

He’d say “Trick or Treat” (tee-de-tee), “Thank you” (Koo) and “Happy Halloween” (Happy Ween).

As we/I walked from house to house, if a house looked non-welcoming or I just didn’t want to knock the door, I told Niuniu that they were asleep. He was very accepting of this and would even point to houses with all the lights out and tell me they were sleeping.

After we had knocked enough doors that my back was killing me from Training my Dragon and I was starting to feel guilty about how I was going to eat all this candy, I decided to call it a night. This is how that transition happened, translated form two year old Chinese to English.Niuniu: Next house, next house!

Daddy: Sorry buddy, everyone has gone to bed
Niuniu: Everyone is sleeping
Daddy: Yup.
Niuniu: Next house, next house!
Daddy: No, now we go home, so Daddy can go to sleep too.
Niuniu: Daddy go to sleep? Niuniu sleepy too.

Without another word he fell asleep on my shoulder and would not wake up. He was all rag doll the rest of the night as we undressed him, forced some milk down his throat and brushed his teeth.

I don’t see how a kid who will wake up and scream for an hour if I step on the squeaky step will all of a sudden sleep through a total depantsing.

Happy Ween Everybody