Xiaoniu 小妞

The Kitty Cat:

Emelia and her “boyfriend”. He likes her a lot more than she likes him. He’ll greet her in the morning and try to give her a hug or kiss. She’ll cry and do anything to get away.

The dragon (James) and his buddy:

Friday afternoon was the annual Halloween parade at daycare. Emelia did considerably well. I got there at about 2:45, just in time to help get her dressed up in her kitty cat costume. The other kids were being dressed by the daycare staff. After waiting for a while they started the parade outside.

Halloween Parade 2008 from xiaoniu on Vimeo.

After the parade we made it back inside for snacks.

Chow-time:

After a while we decided to change things up and move Emelia from the toddlers’ section to the threes so that she could spend some time with her favorite buddy, James.

Buddies:

By the time we left the kids were full of sugar and it showed. Getting Emelia into the car was a chore. Keeping her quite during the ride was harder yet. Thankfully, all that energy translated into a very independent little girl when it came time to hit up the houses in our neighborhood for candy.

She did much better than I expected. We went out to trick-or-treat around 5pm, when it was still full light outside, but late enough where folks were home. We made our way around some of our neighborhood to see the people we know and to meet a few people that we knew of through others, but never met before in person.

The neighbors loved Emelia’s costume. With being early they spend plenty of time chatting us up before letting us move on to other houses. It took nearly and hour to finish up all of 10 houses. Emelia and daddy shared some candy when we got back, which seemed to only add to the energy level. She handled it well and got to sleep without much trouble that night.

As for Sue she stayed home the entire time handing out candy to the few kids that did make it out. Not many were out this year. Not more than last year for sure. We were handing out candy two at a time. By half way through I was handing them out three at a time. We still ended up with 2-3 bags of candy by the end.

Most of the kids were great. We only had group of shitheads. I saw some guy in costume ring the bell and then I got a look at the other three people. My first words were “Looks like we’re getting some big kids this year!” The guy that rang the bell was clearly the father of the two teenagers, and the older woman was most likely the mom. They smelled of cigarettes. I gave the kids  candy and joking asked if he wanted any. His and his wife said “Of course we want some.” I played along and gave them eat some candy. After a while I realized that they came by car, most likely from the city. They certainly were not locals. Oh well. The worst damage we suffered was some candy wrappers on the lawn and in the bush. I believe these fools were the culprits, but I won’t complain.