<p>Answering the door to so many trick-or-treaters tonight, I can’t help but remember when DD was little. I miss the days of her running and jumping into our arms. I miss her constant questions. I miss the giggling and silliness of that age. I’m so proud of the young lady she has become, but I miss the little girl she once was. I guess I’m just feeling very melancholy tonight.</p>
<p>I have a big basket of beanie babies I am giving away with the candy- so far no body wants them!
humph
Perhaps I will make them take one or else they don’t get any candy!</p>
<p>My 15 year old is out trick or treating- I imagine my senior in college is doing so as well- I miss taking them out myself-
well when it isn’t raining ;)</p>
<p>When in a similar mood, I suggested having a second child to TheMom. She told me to run the idea by my second wife. Which prompted me to reflect aloud upon holding auditions for same, which in turn…</p>
<p>Yeah, I know what you mean though. Whether it’s Halloween, or just at the church or the store… The other day a four-year-old was with her Dad at the market and they rounded the aisle to where all the pumpkins were. That awe-struck “Oh gosh!!!” from the little girl was so precious.</p>
<p>I talked to TheD last night. At least I can still needle her to the point where I get the five-syllable “D-a-aa-a-ad!”</p>
<p>I’d have loved a half dozen little ones, but galwaydad and I decided it would be a selfish decision, given our crazy lives alot of the time. So I, too, find Halloween nostalgic for that much less complicated time with our kids!
TheDad, now that I know that there may be auditions for a new position, I can lord that over galwaydad when he gets annoying! (But, alas, your criteria for selection sound like you’d be looking in a more fertile group!)</p>
<p>TheDad:
“Which prompted me to reflect aloud upon holding auditions for same, which in turn…”</p>
<p>…put you in an awkward position? Or in traction?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>A very dangerous proposal! Not every society believes that marriage is between “one man and one woman” especially when progeny is involved! ;)</p>
<p>Yep, cute little kids at our house tonight too…and a hysterical barking dog to announce each one’s arrival :rolleyes: </p>
<p>Our youngest is still out with the neighborhood boys and our oldest will come by later with our toddler granddaughter. Ahhh. Grandkids are the best; all of the cuteness and none of the work ;)</p>
<p>OK, let me help…</p>
<p>Tonight was Halloween, as you all know. My D7 spent the day asking me if it was almost time to go trick of treat…every 30 minutes. </p>
<p>The temperature outside started to drop at about 5pm (it had been up to 70 earlier in the day)…and by 6 it was cold. We set out for the Halloween parade…but on the way my D and her friends couldn’t help ringing a few doorbells…so we missed the parade. I like the parade and left early just so that we would be sure to make the paprade. No parade. I complained - and all 4 girls told me they didn’t care about the parade. </p>
<p>Ok - we arrived just as 500 - 600 other kids arrived - within a 3 block radius. Yes, 500-600, no less. We waited as they waited in line on stairs or on walkways to homes. Parents were dressed, dogs and cats were dressed, babies in strollers were dressed. It was a mob scene. </p>
<p>Its nice when the kids come down the same walkway they just went up (since moms and dads are waiting for them), but they think its a better idea to cross the lawns and wind up coming back to the sidewalk three or four houses down. When there are 500 kids, moms and dads don’t notice such things as lawn crossings. Panic struck on several oocasions - on the part of parents. Kids never noticed we were missing.</p>
<p>In the spirit of global relief, we also Trick or Treat for Unicef. Any idea how much extra time is added to each door because of Unicef? </p>
<p>People are not prepared with quarters - they are prepared with candy. So, each treat giver must then go off in search of money for the Unicef box…so we wait…with 20-30 kids in line behind us. Then, after too much waiting, they all begin giving us the evil eye for our Unicef boxes. One of the others moms in our group offered (just to the moms) to just give each kid a $10 bill to get us to nix the boxes. ;)</p>
<p>After an hour and a half of this…we head back to the home of my Ds friend…and I hear my Ds friend’s mom tell her D not to eat any more unwrapped cookies from her trick or treat bag. Her D responds saying she got the unwrapped cookie from my D’s bag. I look at my D and she’s chewing and looking back at me like “uh oh”. 
Bad mommies - none of us had the “nothing unwrapped” discussion before setting out. We figured our neighbors would know better. 
</p>
<p>You see, it’s nice to remember 4 year olds and Halloween when you are sitting in your home handing out treats and warming your toes by the fire in between doorbell rings - but us parents of wee ones are out in the trenches.:rolleyes:</p>
<p>And when it was all over - what did they beg to do? Go to MacDonalds!! :eek:</p>
<p>momsdream, LOL!! I have a little still too…</p>
<p>LOL, Momsdream!</p>
<p>I have to say that, given the weepy nostalgia I’ve been experiencing today, I’d have happily traded places with you tonight. I MISS with a capital “M” the days when my little fairies and ninja turtles were hyper excited at the prospect of going trick-or-treating. I looked through snap-shots of my D and S when they were little, dressed for Halloween fun, and wish I could have just five minutes of that time back again. I suppose that’s what grandkids are for…</p>
<p>I just picked up my D from trick or treating-
I didnt get to see her in her costume ( Australian super hero) but she was quite chatty and we skipped the free way and drove through the more “colorful” neighborhoods to see the costumes
Halloween is a big party night in Seattle apparently</p>
<p>Halloween was always a big deal here as I always made the costumes which often were on the unique side (still have ‘em). When they graduated and I made framed poster sized collages of about 250 photos of their lives, I included every Halloween costume. Since I made these collages fairly recently and they hang on the girls’ dorm walls, these costumes are fresh in my mind. </p>
<p>Here, trick or treating is not like in suburbia or a city. We live in the country on a dirt road and you can’t walk really from house to house and a lot of trick or treating is by car. However, while families do that to houses of folks they know, quite spread out, what most do is to go into the village so the kids can walk and that means the whole town hits up whoever lives in the village. Just in case, I did buy a little candy if anyone drove to our house and my husband wanted to carve a pumpkin with me because he can’t quite get used to giving up what we did with the kids. So, I roasted the seeds and he sent them to the kids in the mail. Nobody came by our house for trick or treating, not that many ever did but in recent years, some young kids did who my kids babysat for but now my kids aren’t here. So, now I have the candy (not good). So, my husband comes home from work and I can tell he misses the little kid thing (it is not as if we did this with 'em in high school though but I guess it is due to their being gone???) and so he says he wants to drive to the village where we used to take 'em trick or treating just so he can just look at the local kids doing it and get his fix and come home…drives 20 min. roundtrip for his peek. </p>
<p>I don’t know what my older kid did, if anything, for Halloween, except I know she had a midterm today, meeting with advisor and midterm tomorrow, plus sports practice so I doubt she fit Halloween in, unless on the weekend. </p>
<p>Younger kid…Halloween was a big part of her day and certainly different than any Halloween she had here in the country (she is in NYC, her first year, is 17). First, she missed classes today to do a community service activity (she is involved in not only this initiative but is starting an internship in NY in the arts as part of being a Tisch Scholar). This activity today, though, was with a bunch of older kids she knows who are 21/22, either Tisch seniors or recent graduates, all of whom she spent summers with for years at a theater camp and these older kids have started a theater company and one of their missions is outreach I suppose and they invited my D to join them and she did as she does this kind of thing anyway for Tisch Scholars (they aren’t, though). They had created and rehearsed a musical revue related to the theme of Halloween. They borrowed costumes from the summer theater program they all used to attend. They performed at a children’s hospital. My D said it was great and she had never seen a hospital set up like this (not that she’s seen many, thankfully) as she said she felt like she was in a children’s center and they had a stage. She said all the kids were very ill and hooked up to machines but all in costumes. She was dressed like Elphaba (witch in Wicked) and they performed the show which she said included a pie in her face! She said she really felt like she was “giving back” because just seven months ago, SHE was in intensive care, then a pediatric wing, and now she was on the “other side”. She enjoyed it. </p>
<p>Then I know she was going with many friends to the Halloween Parade in Greenwich Village (which, uh, is NOT like the little Vermont village I was describing earlier, LOL!). She and her roomie had bought costumes to dress like cops and a boy they know was dressed as the robber. I can’t imagine the scene down there and I have not heard about it yet. Suffice to say, it wasn’t like home. </p>
<p>So, here we sit with a jack o lantern nobody saw, candy we should not eat ourselves, no kids, a basement full of homemade costumes, and memories. Those Halloween days are over for us. </p>
<p>I bequeth them to Momsdream, LOL. </p>
<p>Susan</p>
<p>OptimizerDad: heh.</p>
<p>Marite: double-heh.</p>
<p>GalwayMom: there may not be auditions. It’s one of those ideas, like going to Casablanca for the waters, where I may have been misinformed. Or at least labored under a misapprehension. Or is that Ms. Apprehension? I get <em>so</em> confused these days. And TheMom tells me that I’m cute but not as cute as I think I am.</p>
<p>Sigh. We had carved pumpkin last night. We had candy last night. We had no trick or treaters last night. Of course, there are other neighborhoods where kids <em>are driven to</em> to secure better loot. And maybe there just aren’t that many kids around here. Ihope that leftover Halloween candy doesn’t count on Atkins.</p>
<p>Susan: I dunno, the idea of two girls, a guy, and some handcuffs sounds-- oh, never mind. I’m sure <em>lots</em> of stuff goes on at colleges that we parents never hear about.</p>
<p>We also experienced the halloween sadness. Husband only got one taker on the trip to the corn maze and pumpkin patch and that didn’t even happen till sunday. We have lots of photos taken of the kids each year at the pumpkin patch. 11 year old begged to go out just with friends in residental neighborhood near her school. We parents camped out at one of the Mom’s house and they got loads of kids and went through lots of candy. The little one’s were so cute and my girlfriend made all the older kids perform for their candy. It was lots of fun but not the same as walking door to door with the other parents while the kids run ahead. Oddest costume a boy about 13 dressed in a pair of undersized boxers with a red scarf used as suspenders no shirt. Quite the outfit. Don’t think his parents saw that outfit before he went out.</p>
<p>we had quite a few kids- the candy matched the amount pretty well, but that only was because I started just giving out one a piece instead of a handful.
( I did find more beanies and small stuffed animals- and encouraged everyone to take one- even the teens took one and were very appreciative 
it was so cute!- the kids were like "thank- you - thank you! * while I thought- you want more? I have boxes full downstairs!*
I also just found my daughters stash- good thing I don’t like candy …much…</p>
<p>Thinking back to when she was four: My D decided to be a ghost. But, because we decided that a sheet over the head is not really safe, we cut a hole out of the sheet, stuck her head through that, then made up her face with scary make-up.</p>
<p>The night before Halloween (mischief night of course), is also her birthday (how apropos). We made her up, and as a special treat, went to the local zoo which has “Rat/BAt” Night, with lots of scary nighttime stuff. Well, she had fun, but decided that the makeup was too scary. So the next day, we ended up trick or treating with her in a sheet with her face sticking out, and no makeup. At every house, people looked at me like I was the world’s worst mother for sticking her in such a poor costume (and she was the most adorable sunflower the year before!).</p>
<p>Anyway, I might go back to some years, but Halloween when she was four would not be one of them!</p>
<p>I remember a time when we lived in Binghamton in upstate NY. We had to go out on Halloween evening, so we’d left a basket of candy outside our door, with a note saying “Help yourself - but just one each, please”.</p>
<p>We came back, and the basket was more than half full - and <em>all</em> the neighborhood kids had made the rounds that night. Big change when we moved to Chicago - we had crowds of near-adult kids fighting with each other to get to the head of the queue, and grabbing what they could.</p>
<p>Halloween… that lovely holiday where we teach our children values such as panhandling, vandalism and extortion! (Just kidding!.. sort of). We have a long steep driveway, so even the kids on our street go a few blocks away where it is flat and the pickings are easier. We only got one trick or treater last night and have bags of leftover candy… soon to be shipped off to college! :)</p>
<p>Splashmom - We have a bag of beanies around here somewhere. Didn’t think to try giving them away to trick or treaters. </p>
<p>Anyone considering adopting?</p>
<p>Soozie,</p>
<p>If daughter went to the parade last night I hope she had a great time. 6th avenue was a mad house as they started setting up th barricades at 8 am. I had a midterm last night so I could not even wrap my mind toward heading back over to 6th ave. By the time I got home, I missed all of the trick or treaters.</p>
<p>I did catch the soundbite on the news and it looks as if a good time was had by all. The weather was really great for a parade. I was never a big fan of trick or treating because I felt it was a bit of a double standard (we telling our kids don’t take candy from strangers, then that is the goal of the night). So I always had a big open house for the kids on the block and we had a big party. </p>
<p>I asked my D last night to please don’t hold it against me.</p>
<p>Halloween has always been a big one for us too. I already told the story of my son’s potato costume, so won’t repeat it. D was the Tin Woodman, Peter Pan, Wonder Woman, Diana the Huntress, a Panther, a Witch, a Leprechaun, Guinevere. Only once, at age 4 a princess. Anyone sense a theme? Yah think the girl wants to have magic powers and rule the world or something?</p>
<p>Anyway, this year as it happened D was back from college. We managed to buy the pumpkins to carve, but forgot to carve them. Still, I got home from work to see that they had put out the pumpkins, but placed votives next to them to be the lantern despite our lack of jack o’…</p>
<p>D. went out with the neighborhood littles she has always babysat for. S had to study for a test and just grumbled a lot. My best friends kids surprised us and came to count their candy on our floor - which was always the tradition when mine were little.</p>
<p>So we are losing Halloween too, but luckily, slowly as opposed to all at once. Bring on the grandkids. I feel the need for a chubby toddler stuffed into something furry. The year D was Peter Pan, I wore a nightgown to be Wendy and S was Michael the baby in his jammies.</p>
<p>Aw. Where is that baby flesh now?</p>