Xiaoniu 小妞

Emelia’s first Halloween went pretty well. Nothing went drastically wrong and we didn’t end up with any TP in our trees (more on that later). Sue and I got out of work a little early so that we could be at daycare for 3:30 when the “Halloween Parade” was to start. Emelia, James and others were  put into their costumes in preparation.

Goodies were laid out for after the parade.

Then we waited around for 3:30 (sharp).

Finally at 3:30pm sharp all the kids were readied for the parade. Infants into strollers or parents’ arms and older kids lined up for the procession. Here is the video of the entire parade. It wasn’t very well organized this year since the woman in charge of the daycare was not present. Usually infants go first followed by others by age. This year was more of a free for all.

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Some kids had fun, while others didn’t. Emelia appeared to spend most of her time checking out every body and just trying to figure out what was going on. James made it through okay and didn’t cry. He just followed the others with a serious face. Some kids cried. Probably from all the unwanted attention. I feel for them. That would have been me.

After the parade we all made our way inside for goodies and snacks.

Parents that came for the parade brought food for the kids and adults. There was more food than necessary and most people were not eating. So, by the time we left more than half the food was untouched. Too bad. Little Emelia had some of a cookie and a few grapes, but really didn’t eat her share. That’s where I stepped in to help. A couple of those really soft cookies, a pretty nasty tasting “Halloween” cookie (I think it was supposed to look like a spider) and some small, but very tasty muffins.

We spent most of the time in the toddler section. Of the parent’s of infants we were the only ones that stayed. All the others left. The older infants section was pretty bare too. One kid whose parents didn’t come happily fed herself junk food and one other older infant with both parents stayed. Otherwise, nobody was there. It seemed like a waste for us to all bring in food. We brought some baby yogurt. I don’t think it went to waste though. I’m sure the food was eaten on Friday.

Afterwards we made our way home for a rest. I didn’t take any pictures during the night, but I don’t think we missed anything too special. We didn’t get too many visitors that night. The ones that came were part of a larger group. I think we got about 4 large packs of families and kids and then some random kids afterwards.

I brought Meimei out to see the neighbors. She’s not allowed to eat candy yet and it was dark and cool so staying out too long wasn’t appropriate. We ended up visiting five houses all around ours. These are the neighbors we know best and they haven’t seen Emelia much, if at all. So, we spent at least 10-15 minutes at each house talking and showing off. By the end Meimei was ready to go home.

By then Amy showed up with James. Sue and I took him around to the rest of the neighbors in the circle. He got his share of candy. Only one person was being a prick. Made a very subtle comment about people making their way home to stop trick-or-treating by a certain time. Sorry pal, we just got started later than you. Prick.

The reason for the TP comment is because last year my neighbor decided to tell me about the year that the one tree in the corner of my yard (before we bought the house) was covered in TP by the neighborhood kids. I got very little sleep Halloween night last year. I kept getting up to check the damn tree. This year she made the same comment. I decided that sleeping was more important and said if anything happens it happens. Oh well. Sure enough nothing happened. The worst we saw were some noisy kids swearing and having a good time, and some shaving cream sprayed onto the road. Nothing bad.

When Sue, James and I got back the boy and I gorged ourselves on candy. At least we tried until Amy put a stop to it. He was kind enough to share his load with me so I got a few choice pieces. Sue picked out a couple from our pot of candy to keep and brought the rest in to work. Let them get fat on our left over candy. I ended eating it all last year. Not again.