Halloween 2012 was by far the best yet.
This was the first year that Nolin actually started to understand the idea of Halloween and he loved it…we did too. For days leading up to Halloween if Nolin was thinking about making a bad choice we didn’t need to try to stop him or scold him. It was a simple redirection and all we had to do (for the most part) was simply say Nolin, do you want to go trick-or-treating? Behavior corrected.
The festivities actually started a few days earlier at our Church’s Trunk-or-Treat. Nolin was a pirate and Grace was a sassy lady bug.
The first car that Nolin walked up to had a normally dressed lady sitting in the trunk behind some streamers. As soon as Nolin saw her, he took off running and screaming. She felt bad that she had scared him, I felt bad because she was handing out full size Crunch bars. I was able to reassure him that things would be ok, and shortly after I (I mean Nolin) was able to score a full size Crunch bar.
He was a little more brave as the cars went on, and eventually set up court in front of a dancing inflatable ghost/pumpkin (my family would have been envious of this inflatable treasure). Eventually he had an audience watching him dance and shake a tambourine in front of his new friend.
Grace was at the other end of the spectrum. She just chilled (ok, actually she mostly slept) and took in all of our friends at Church admiring her lady bug costume.
Now flash forward to Wednesday night. Nolin had actually taken a nap, was well rested and ready to go pillage the neighborhood looking for candy. We got him dressed up and we got Grace into her other Halloween outfit (I am quickly learning that girls have to have a different outfit for everything).
We headed back over to our place so that we could stop by our neighbors’ houses before heading to the Trick-or-Treat mecca on Teresa’s street. This year we actually had the chance to start off with a group of other kids and families which made for a lot of fun.
After a few houses we fell behind because Nolin was very much into hanging out at each house or running up to people and shouting “Boo! Sorry I didn’t mean to scare you”
Nolin walked up to all the doors, rang the door bell and would shout Trick-or-Treasure (part of his pirate persona I guess). Eventually he started throwing in a few Trick-or-Treats for good measure.
As we made our way down Teresa’s street Nolin was enthralled with all of the ghosts and witches decorating the streets. He also loved the fact that his bucket was getting full of treasure. We didn’t try to limit him too much because he has absolutely no interest in candy, although one house was handing out bags of pretzels…this was the ultimate score for him.
We took a short break from collecting candy and made camp in the trunk of our car in Teresa’s driveway to help her pass out candy. Eventually we ran out of candy, so we made our way to the main attraction…the haunted house.
As we entered, the host let the creatures know that this would be a not as scary version for Nolin. He slowly made his way along the sidewalk as the strobe lights flashed and just kept telling me I’m not scared daddy, I’m really not scared.
His very concentrated steps towards me and his wide-eyed look seemed to suggest differently. Then he walked up to the zombie sitting in a lazy boy, got up to his face and said I’m really not scared. The zombie could only laugh.
As we got to the front door and candy, Nolin hesitated as he held out his hat for candy (we had left the bucket at home). Not really sure what to do, Nolin broke out into a pirate song. The chainsaw killer popped out from the side of the house and said He’s not really singing pirate songs is he?…that is awesome.
It was official, the dead had all awoken and started clapping and laughing for Nolin as he quickly made his way out of the haunted house to Jenn & Grace.
Nolin is now convinced that he sees ghosts everywhere (let’s hope he is not like the 6th Sense kid), but he loves it.
We have told him that the ghosts are all sleeping until next Halloween. He replies that they have just gone home to see their families. Either way, I can’t wait until next Halloween when both of our little monsters are unleashed on the neighborhood.
Our Modern Family 