This is Halloween

We are holding our first Halloween party this year!

I expect it will be very different from every other get together we host. I am expecting the same people that usually come over and who we celebrate with. Maybe a few new ones (apparently they like to RSVP at the last minute?).

One main difference is that *I* am dressing up. Yes me. And AB too. I waffled on this. Waffled a lot. I thought about being a witch - easy enough and a black dress is always flattering. Then Leif started selecting costumes for me (Boba Fett anyone?). AB got in the mix too (Slave Princess Leia... thanks for at least the vote of confidence honey). Skadi, sigh, which makes me a touch guilty, thinks I should be a purple witch.


What it finally came down to is that some wee little part of me has always loved Princess Leia. Leif loves Princess Leia. My husband likes her too. I was never Princess Leia as a little girl... nope, I was Gene Simmons instead.

And then I got to thinking that this may be my one and only chance to go as something that matches my son (who is Captain Rex the Clone Trooper). And Leif is digging that thought big time. Leif match mommy? What a great idea! He picked out the Ventress costume for me, but I had fear about pulling it off. We settled on Princess Leia.

AB soon jumped on board and ordered a Jedi robe. And Skadi will likely be a bug. (The witch costume has been nixed and should never return to her sight.)

Our party will have a number of firsts... AB and I in costume. My dad is visiting. And then there is the food.

Yep, you see right. Mummy hot dogs. Hot dogs wrapped in Pillsbury crescent roll strips. Not exactly the fare you might expect to eat upon showing up at my house!

Add to the list cocktail dog spiders (also using Pillsbury crescent roll strips). Witches purses (ok, those will be yummy, though not terribly gourmet). Chicken wings. Sandies that look like witches. (Yes I totally could make sugar cookies... or not - hey take a look at my schedule between now and the party!)

You get the idea. Things that kids will not only eat, but find cool. (Hopefully.)

I guess my reason in posting this is almost a sort of warning to the friends who are attending... don't expect fancy! An apology to the parents for all the mass produced, but very fun, stuff that their kids will eat. And a declaration to the effect of let's just all have fun and forget about calories, high fructose corn syrup, etc. And I should also say that even though my son knows all the words to, and will ask repeatedly for "This is Halloween"... he has not seen "The Nightmare before Christmas". Though it is my favorite Halloween movie and I have been so tempted.



What you get in return? A night with friends. Worn out kids at the end of the night.

And maybe most importantly, one more wear of that Halloween costume!

Have a Happy Halloween!

A very confusing topic - Holidays

The period between January to Easter is a very difficult time for Leif. We go from having some fun holiday every month or so, to nothing.

There's Valentine's Day in there. But to a little boy, Valentine's Day isn't overly interesting. There's mommy's birthday and daddy's birthday and even Skadi's birthday. But once again, no big fun holiday until Easter. But even then, Easter doesn't hold a candle to Halloween for Leif.

He loves Halloween. Every Tuesday is "movie day" at school and the kids can each bring in a movie to be voted on by the class to watch.

Every Tuesday for the last few months Leif has hauled in "Pooh's Heffalump Halloween Movie".

The class has watched it zero times. Still Leif is determined and not deterred in his goal to make Halloween a year round event. He has decided this year that not only will he have a birthday party, but somewhere he got wind of a costume party and has decided that everyone should wear a costume to his birthday party.

I refuse to do this to the other parents. Yeah, not only do you need to go out and buy a present, make time in your weekend for a birthday party and get your child there, hang out and then leave with a child hyped up on sugar? But yeah, also, put them in a costume.

Umm no.

I thought about letting Leif wear a costume. Or saying "costumes optional", but that puts pressure on the parents too. I think we will go with just no costumes.

Not a day goes by that Halloween isn't mentioned. Including the drive home last night.

Leif: "How many days till Halloween now?"

NM: "Oh about 7 months to the day."

Leif: "How about 7 days instead."

NM: "Nope, months. About 210 days." (I thought about reminding him that his birthday comes first, but then we would have gotten back onto the subject of costume birthday parties - a notion I am trying to squash.)

Leif: "Hmm."

NM: "But Easter is in 12 days!"

Leif: "How about 2 days."

NM: "Nope, 12 days."

Leif: "How about 10 days?" (He is learning the fine art of negotiation thanks to dinner time.)

NM: "Everyone celebrates Easter on the same day." (Yes, I know Eastern religions are a week later, but I wasn't going there.)

Leif: "Who says?"

NM: "God says."

(Silence from the back seat.)

Leif: "So the bunny belongs to God! I finally figured it out!"

This was Halloween

Check out how thick this pumpkin is... AB wondered if he was EVER going to get the top off.

Leif in the pumpkin. This has become some sort of tradition since he was a baby and I put him in the pumpkin and he SCREAMED. Now he doesn't scream anymore.

The four Star Wars boys in Leif's class. Note that *my* son is the only one not from the Dark Side of the Force.

"May the force be with you!"

Outside by the scary spider.

My two Jedis. Skadi refused to wear the Yoda hat. Oh well.

Joining up for tricks and treats with Leif's best friends.

Must go finish those Blurb photo books...

But first I had to put up some pictures from Skadi's Halloween party today.

Skadi and her best friend:

Skadi's other buds - and the mom of one.

Look mom I found a pumpkin!

Helping "M" get a pumpkin too.

Oops! They dropped it.


Skadi is quite pleased with her pumpkin and wondering what she should do with it next?


Of course the only logical thing to do with a pumpkin now is to sit on it. (I am positive she got this notion from the pumpkin patch visit when I forced she and Leif to sit on pumpkins for pictures.)

Taking it a step further...

He gets it from me...

Leif has apparently inherited my "overzealousness" for the holidays. I just finished singing the "12 Days of Christmas" book to him. (He picked it out.) Then he turned around and sang it to me. I loved it.

Leif: "On the first day of Christmas someone sent a package to me, mommy what is this again, an ostrich?"

NM: "It's a partridge, a smaller bird than an ostrich."

Leif: "Ok, they sent me a partridge and a pear. On the second day of Christmas someone sent a package to me..."

I seriously busted up at the "eight mooses probably for Halloween".

The topic of Christmas has come up this weekend because AB and I have been talking about what a good gift might be this year and the fact that I am chomping at the bit to get my shopping started. We tossed out ideas today on a gift/gifts for each other and the family.

A Wii was mentioned. Leif and I went to friends' house this weekend and played for a couple hours. I was surprised how he seemed to be picking it up by the end and that I had to pry the "remote-thingy" out of his hand. And I was also surprised how much fun I had.

We also mentioned an HD TV. AB talks about and oogles the TVs at Costco, but neither of us could bite it. Our TV watching has dropped off to nearly nill since AB works out of town, long hours and goes to bed right after the kids are out.

I think we have both fallen out of the habit. We are Tivo-ing Entourage (love that), Survivor, Grey's (though we missed the premier somehow) and I Tivo Amazing Race. We struggle to get through those. Oh but we did actually watch a whole movie this past weekend - Love in the Time of Cholera. And no it isn't that one with Ed Norton where the guy goes to treat cholera patients, brings his wife and she dies. That one sucked. AB and I, though both tired and sick from our colds, sat mesmerized and wow'd by the movie. It was awesome and I highly recommend it.

Ok, so we nixed the idea of an HD TV. I am still voting for waiting until our TV dies since we watch so little lately and I am not buying a new HD TV for Wall-E (DVD on order). AB is probably more of the opinion that we will get a new one when we move.

Tonight AB mentioned an idea... "we could go back to the waterpark for Christmas". Hmm... he might just be onto something there...

So before we should start talking about Christmas we should get through Halloween.

My love for Halloween is also something Leif gets from me. Today he told me that I could be a chef for Halloween if I wanted to. Think I can stretch it far enough to infer that he liked my cooking tonight? No, probably not.

Last year I told AB as he was tossing things up in the attic willy nilly-like to leave the Halloween stuff accessible as I know that there is no way he will want to retrieve my Halloween decorations when I want them. He never likes crawling into the attic when the time comes to do it, but he will. Today he admitted that he's pretty sure my Halloween decorations went into the attic even though I suggested the garage, "and do you really need them the first weekend of October?"

He will be retrieving them next weekend.

Leif is all hyped up over Halloween and every evening goes out on the back porch to practice "trick or treating". He's got it down - even the "smell my feet" part.

Tonight we were singing the song I invented, "This is Halloween, this is Halloween, Halloween night."

Ok, so I didn't invent it.

I just am prepping Leif for the day when I pull off of the shelf one of my favorite animated movies ever. I have also maybe encouraged him just a little in watching "What's This" on You Tube.

Still, when we were singing our "This is Halloween" song this evening, I was quite surprised when Leif took off singing, "I am the one hiding under your bed!"

My guess is someone at school is watching "The Nightmare Before Christmas". Still though, I will wait at least another year before sitting down on the couch with him in front of the movie.

Oh and I officially get my Star Wars Halloween. Leif has his Anakin Skywalker costume and Yoda fits Skadi perfectly. And they are both perfecting their Jedi skills with lightsabers recently released from long term time-out. (My bribery offer for agreeing to the Anakin costume over Boba Fett.)

Where have I gone wrong?

Thankfully I have been having a conversation on my discussion board recently with other moms of boys that makes me believe that I haven't messed up THAT bad.

One thing with raising kids that AB had to compromise on, that I stood strong was that our kids would never have toy guns. The line has to be drawn somewhere and so I chose to draw the line in between toy guns and water guns. Water guns are fine, toy guns are not.

As Leif has gotten more into Star Wars I had another decision to face. That Princess Leia action figure? The one with the gun? Is that ok? I gave on those too. They are an inch long and usually lost within a week. I could deal.

Gun talk at school is strictly forbidden and so I felt like I had backup there. AB all along has said, "boys will play guns no matter what, you aren't going to change that". My retort has always been, "then they can do it with their imaginations and invent their own". Which Leif has done.

I don't mind swords or lightsabers so much - except when they are used on his unarmed sister. The lightsabers have been in time out for awhile now. Maybe even months. Leif will have to do something pretty extraordinary to release them from their confines in the top of my closet. Until then the foam swords (that frequently also land in time out) he picked out with his gift card from grandpa are just fine.

Today on the way home from work I handed Leif a costume catalog turned open to the Star Wars page. I have dreams of little Yoda and Obi Wan Kenobi walking down the street together. We have Yoda and it will fit Skadi and is just too perfect for her. Leif would make a perfect Obi Wan. Or Anakin. Ok, I will even pay for the Darth Vadar costume to make this work.

"Oooooh!" Leif swooned. "Look at that costume with the gun, that is SO cool!"

I cringed.

"Guns are not cool," I said.

Leif swooned some more. And some more. Then he started turning the pages and pointing out every costume with a gun.

Okay okay... if I want my Star Wars dream Halloween it may end up being Bobba Fet and Yoda. (Rolling my eyes.) Though in the next few weeks while there is still time, I am going to push as hard as possible, reminding him that if he is Anakin, Obi Wan or Darth he gets his lightsabers out of time out.

This is Halloween

A tiger and a ladybug - a ladybug that really wants to crawl.

It's the Great pumpkins!

Heading out for tricks and treats! There was a major haul by the end of the night in our house.

And this is par for the night with Bean the Ladybug. Fussy, fussy. But at least she was cute...

Catching up, taking a breather

It seems as though the past week has been a whirlwind of activity. All good. But it isn't slowing down.

We carved the pumpkins tonight. Then after bath and I got Skadi down I sat down with Leif to watch "It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown". I have always been a huge Charlie Brown fan, related well with him for some reason, and was very excited this year that Leif is to the age that he will also enjoy it. I was bummed that it didn't come on though until the night before Halloween. And since we were pushing the bedtime deadline, I didn't even have the luxury of Tivo'ing it to fast forward through commercials. Wow are commercials brutally painful when you haven't watched them for a few years.

Oh and then there was one that was just so highly inappropriate during a kid's show that I am thinking about contacting the TV station. It was about meth recovery and a woman who lost her child and would sit in front of his school at 9pm strung out. Oh but all is better now and she has custody of him. I sat there saying, "what the?" to AB and he yells back from the kitchen, "during a kid's show?" Umm yeah. Leif is also not to keen on commercials. Every time one came on he said, "I want to watch it again!" Referring to the movie, not the commercial.

There have been a whole slew of funny comments the past few days. I asked him if he wanted me to wash his hair tonight since he was floating on his back in the tub and he told me, "no, we don't have time for that tonight".

He has a few favorite songs lately, but unfortunately XM radio is also not like Tivo and I can't just rewind. He is fond of the two Cars songs, "Life is a Highway" and the one by Sheryl Crow. I can hum and mumble most of the songs, but come up with a name? Got me. The one that was nearly Leif's breaking point the other day though was Jack Johnson's "Upside Down". There were tears over not being able to listen to the Curious George song again. Must make a cd. And another new development? My son has fine tuned his hearing and realizing mom really does suck at singing. He now politely requests that I not sing along with the songs.

Oh then there was the funny one that came out of our friend's son and not Leif. We have been suspicious that J is the other child who is not napping at daycare. School has mentioned in passing "there is another child with a napping problem like Leif". The mom mentioned to the dad within earshot of J, "so evidently there is another child that doesn't nap with Leif". And J piped up, "oh that's me!"

They are so honest. I am loving this stage where I can ask Leif, "did you have a time out at school" and he will answer me honestly. If it is yes, he usually follows up with "But but..." or "Because cause..." and he goes on to explain his case. Which is never one-sided at all. Ever.

He has had a chocolate fixation lately. According to the teachers, so has the rest of the class. He got in the car the other day and told me, "mommy, you need to tell Ms. R about chocolate. She doesn't know about it." They made an effort to remedy the situation by giving the kids hot cocoa for snack that day. When I asked Leif about it he said "no, we had lattes".

So tomorrow is Halloween and I think I have Leif thoroughly amped about it. When cutting the pumpkins open the other day Leif told me, "oh mommy, I bet there is a camera inside!" He has been talking about asking Santa for a camera like N's that is "blue and not pink". Because you know Santa might make a mistake and all. Evidently Leif is stuck somewhere between Halloweenland and Christmasland. He hasn't really sorted out the two holidays and I am sure The Great Pumpkin didn't help tonight!

Tomorrow night AB will take Leif trick or treating while I stay home with the Beaner in her ladybug costume and hand out candy. Protecting my giant jack-o-lanterns and all. (Thanks to all our friends who have helped with lifting and moving them. Please help me to reign in my husband who is threatening to sabotage my plants next year!)

Thursday AB's dad and girlfriend arrive. Friday we are taking off and running around with them. They are wine fans, so we have a few wineries on the list, but not too many so as to bore the kids to death. They will stick around for swimming lessons on Saturday morning and then head back over the hill for my FIL's reunion.

Things start to calm down after that and my countdown begins. Countdown to my full week off over Thanksgiving. Every year I save my personal holiday days and revel in an entire week off. I usually leave Leif in daycare for much of it so I can get things done. This year in the name of saving money and to afford me some one on one time with Beaner, she is staying home with me all week. I am starting my list of things I hope to accomplish.

Skadi is nearly on the move and isn't scared of falling on her face in her attempts to crawl. I keep thinking her movement is just around the corner.

AB has succumbed to my Jedi mind powers just the last month or so after working on him for the past year and has said we can get a kitten in December. I nearly had one fall in my lap and all. I am 90% commited to taking one providing I can get a female and they are healthy and not wild things. And the coworker who has them gets over herself and her fear of children and let's me bring Leif over to see them soon. They just opened their eyes.

So my Christmas present is a kitten. Cheap present until you talk about the automatic litter box, a new carrier (because Calley's old carrier won't do), two vet appointments at 8 and 11 weeks, spaying and declawing. AB is reconsidering his reluctant yes after I called the vet and priced this all out. But he knows he really can't recant it now. We have been talking about names with Leif.

Only one name works for him. Sophia. Also the name of my mom's cat. And he knows this. We need a Sophia too. He told me last night we could name it something else but he was calling it Sophia. Sigh. I asked him if there wasn't any other name he liked. He told me "Brown Ghost" is ok.

Double sigh.

My pumpkins

Official weights... 22 and 32 lbs.

Oh yeah, official pumpkin as in fruit's weights... 71 and 141 lbs.

I have saved seeds from the large one. Should anyone desire Giant Atlantic pumpkin seeds, let me know.