What a Treat

Halloween night was a lot of fun this year, mainly because I'm able to explain things to Helen ahead of time and she'll remember it later. I had taken some time last weekend to mention how Halloween worked, so Helen had been expecting to go trick or treating for a few days. She woke up that morning, very sleepy as I got her dressed, and mumbled, "wanna go twicker tweat."

That night I raced home from work and we got ready to have a little bit of company - the Amazing Babysitter and her Still-Smells-Like-New-Car-Husband were coming over to check out the festivities. They brought their two giant German shepherds, who were both wearing skunk costumes. ADORABLE.



I put Helen in her outfit - previously mentioned here as the Hello Kitty Butterfly costume - and then proceeded to get into my costume for the annual photo shoot.



Some of you may have caught the brief Wonder Woman rant last month. So it shouldn't come as too much of a shock to see me in the costume. What might be a little shocking is learning that costume is homemade. Everything except the boots and the lasso were put together with the assistance of my mother, a sewing machine, needle, thread, and serious ironing skills. Even my little sister got in a few stitches on the skirt. I found a lot of tips online from people who had made their own Wonder Woman costume, and was inspired to do it myself. Fortunately I was able to set aside some time on a couple of weekends to get supplies and had a very willing mother help to put it all together.

I am so proud of how the outfit turned out. I have pictures of the process, and I'll compose a post about later this month. But in the meantime, let's think about this: how many people my age can honestly say, "My mom helped me make my Halloween costume this year"? Raise your hands. Higher, folks. I need to get a good count here. Anyone?

Helen had a ball with the tour of the neighborhood this year. But it took 4 houses for her to actually speak up and say "Trick or Treat." Usually when I prompted her with, "Helen, what do you say?" she would respond with "Thank you!" And really, when an adult hands you a giant bowl of candy and lets you pick whatever you want, sometimes as many as FOUR pieces, you can't go wrong with a "Thank you."

Now, if she could just remember to grab the chocolate instead of the Root Beer Dum-Dums, her parents would be thrilled. Girlfriend LOADED UP on the lollipops this year. I don't know what it is about her and lollipops, but it's a little disturbing. Given a choice of anything on a stick and everything else with sugar in it, she goes for the stick every time. Here we have the post-Halloween wrap-up picture, where Helen has one lollipop in her mouth, and is trying to unwrap a second one. Life is tough.



She finally passed out around 9 pm, about an hour later than usual, after bouncing off every single wall in the house from all the sugar. Hope everyone had a great holiday, and that each of you got all the Dum-Dums you wanted, too.