Last year might have been her first Halloween, but this year was more exciting for sure. We were able to use the same pumpkin costume as last year (no Elsa here!), but that’s where the similarities end.
Avery’s First in 2014
Avery’s Second in 2015
Good to see she’s growing! But maybe a little too fast, she’s already expressing herself a bit much.
Fine, Avery, you can pick your own costume next year, geez!
During the day on Halloween, we carved our first pumpkin as a family.
We tried to get Avery to stick her hand inside to help pull out the pumpkin guts, but all she wanted to do was stick her head in and sniff.
Not wanting to waste the insides, I spread the seeds on a baking sheet to roast them. Avery was happy to sit and observe.
I told her we were going to cook and eat the pumpkin’s guts. Although she didn’t look the slightest bit interested, she couldn’t stop eating them once out of the oven.
Due to my lack of tools, skills, and overall desire to get elaborate, we kept it simple with a traditional jack-o-lantern look. Kelley drew the lines and I completely jacked up the outline with my unsteady knife hand.
The end result was nothing mind-blowing, but hey, we did it together as a family and that’s what matters most.
We just enjoyed seeing how involved and interested Avery was with the whole process, and you could tell how excited she was about our carved gourd.
Maybe “excited” is not the right word, but she Iinterested, I swear! She really became interested as we prepared to go trick-or-treating, especially with all of the costumed big kids (parents too) out and about going door to door. Outside at the front of our house, she just stood in her pumpkin suit and stared as Elsa’s walked with Mummies, and The Hulk had apparently settled down and shrunk in size.
There was no carrying around like last year, this time she was ready to walk on her own.
We have an almost half mile loop around our house that she walked most of on her own with only a few tiny trips. Those darn feet!
Avery still doesn’t know what candy is, she just calls out the color of the wrappers if she sees some, and we never expected for her to get anything on her trick-or-treating adventure, it was all for the experience. That said, one of our neighbor friends, Jason along with his wife Jennifer, had asked what she could have so they could have something to give her to put in her bucket, and I said she loves bananas. This simple, yet generous offer was extremely thoughtful and appreciated by Going Mom and myself.
He and his wife have two little girls, Natalie and Zoey, and I’ve mentioned how we’ve been over to jump on their trampoline and play a few times before. Their house was the only one we actually stopped at that night, and Avery happily (with a confused-about-her-surroundings look) accepted her banana treat to fill her Halloween basket.
Kelley and I were trying to chat for a minute, and in that minute, Avery was already trying to eat her treat without even peeling the thing. We stopped her after she already had her teeth sunk in the peel, and I took it away to “unwrap” the wrapper so she could have a bite. Bad move, that set off our impatient pumpkin.
Crap, meltdown! Luckily, the crisis was averted by her brown-spotted treat once it was in her belly.
Good thing I didn’t mistake that other, more round pumpkin next to her as my costumed daughter or she would’ve been outraged when I tried to feed it her banana.
Happy once more, we set off to complete the loop with Avery doing mostly good on foot. We ran into some friends all around her age and as we stopped to talk to their parents, they conversed amongst themselves as well.
On the right is Natalie, and the middle is another friend/neighbor, Emma. Not sure what they discussed, but none of them looked exactly happy with us.
Soon after, we completed the loop and thus, Avery’s first experience of trick-or-treating. I’m sure next year will be even more eventful and probably not as easy to get away with just a banana for her basket, but only time will tell.
Did you take your little ones out to trick-or-treat?
Any fun/exciting/hopefully not bad stories to share?
