This year's Halloween was one to remember. (For a look at all the Halloween photos, click here.) It started out with this gem of a jack-o-lantern. And of course, I'm not referring to the plain, old, regular sugar pumpkin that I carved, but rather the Crying Jack-o-Lantern that Thora designed, the only pumpkin with tears that I saw in the whole neighborhood. "Why does it have tears?" you ask. I wish I had an answer for you. Except that when we were drawing pumpkin faces on paper prior to the carving, Thora thought that it had to have tears, even though she couldn't explain why. She kept asking me, me, "Why is it crying, Mommy?" So I had to come up with what seemed like a hundred reasons for a crying pumpkin that she wished into existence! I hoped that when it came time to do the carving, I could get away with just its scared expressions. But, no, Thora demanded that our pumpkin cry.
In fact, I have to confess that at first I was pretty self-conscious of the Crying Pumpkin; that's why I carved it a little friend, a little pumpkin that would make it feel less scared in the dark, spooky nights leading up to Halloween. I worried that people would be troubled seeing our pumpkin with tears, or whisper about the house from which, now that they thought about it, always seemed to be haunted by the cries of a little girl. Perhaps the little girl in that house, they would surely think, was trying to communicate to her neighbors, the horrors to which her mean parents subject her. And what better way to do that than a spooky, crying pumpkin. In fact, if approached about Thora's message, I might suggest that that is the expression of her parents, when forced to endure some of her recent dinnertime meltdowns.
All joking aside, I'm glad to have such a distinctive pumpkin to remember, and such an imaginative little girl who feels no need yet to follow the crowd. Here she is re-enacting what the pumpkin is thinking, something like "Ohh, it's sooo spooky that it's making me cry!"
Here she is dressed in her costume. She was a ladybug this year, something that made both daughter and parents very happy. She had latched onto the idea of being a unicorn, when I thought it would be a good idea to let her leaf through the Pottery Barn Kids catalog that came a few months ago. When I went to look for it online, I realized that I hadn't noticed it's hefty price tag, and more immediately, saw that it was sold out. Yikes. What I thought of was Thora's love of wings. Her friend Zach has a pair of wings in his dress-up clothes and it's what she loves the most. I made her a deal. If she would go as a ladybug (the dress, arm warmers, and hair clips we already owned) I would buy her not one, but two different pairs of wings. It took no time for her agree that two sets of wings would be better than a full body costume that she'd likely never wear again.
Auric went as The Happy Lion. We borrowed the costume and he contributed the Happy, despite missing his afternoon nap due to the festivities. He is just that happy.
Auric is really into what's going on in the sky. He searches the sky for airplanes and helicopters mostly. But when he sees the moon in the daytime, he's adamant about pointing it out. He'll point out birds and sometimes he just wants us all to notice the clouds in the sky. Inside, he's noticed that there are ceiling lights above him almost all the time. He points all these out.
And he's getting closer to walking every day. He is such a speedy crawler--seriously, you cannot look away before he has crawled to the top of a staircase (gated, of course) or into the bathroom and has lifted up the toilet lid and is swishing his hand around gleefully in the toilet water! What fun he has! But recently, within the last couple weeks, he loves to push his push car around the house or at the park, or to walk--balancing with just one hand--with his mom or dad. He'll get there one day. It's just exciting to see that in fact he might actually want to be a bi-ped like the rest of his family.
Here's Thora with her fellow ladybug, Ellie, her best friend, Zach, and their dad, Dave. We enjoyed some of the city's free outdoor Halloween fun (parlor games, jewelry-making, and a magician who had Thora captivated!) before we met up with our friends for a pizza party and trick-or-treating.
Auric being cute at the pizza party.
Thora and a bunch of her friends had a great time playing and then getting ready for the real purpose of the evening--CANDY. Even though Thora doesn't eat candy really at all, especially now that she no longer gets M&Ms for potty-training victories, she still knows that candy is something to be coveted, and that walking around the neighborhood at night, ringing on neighbors doors and getting candy, getting up close to the decorations that we've been appreciating for the last couple weeks, that all of that is a special treat.
Thora and her friend Olive joined forces and were inseparable during the trick-or-treating. It was adorable. They held hands the entire time, helping each other up and down stairs, and walking hand in hand down the sidewalks. The only time they let go was to open their bags and to pluck out the best looking candy from the mix in the bowl. They lasted the longest out of the whole bunch, but were cold and tired by the end. It was a very Happy Halloween.
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