Halloween 2013!

First there were the traditional Halloween after school treats.

Nathaniel burst in the door after school saying, "Mom, I hope you made a lot of snacks because Benjamin is bringing home a whole gang of people!"

Fortunately, he dropped off a few along the way and it was only one friend who came home with him.

 And now I introduce to you: The 11th Doctor (Nathaniel), The 9th Doctor (Caleb), Oberon- King of the Faeries (Benjamin), A red faerie (Benjamin's friend), and a cute little witch (Lilyanna).

 They made me take lots of pictures, so they could pose differently with their sonic screwdrivers, of course.

And then we ended the night (after trick or treating through lots of wind and rain) with delicious mummy meatloaf and mashed potatoes.

Happy Halloween!

"Fire burn and cauldron bubble!"

On Friday my kids had off from school, I had an awful sinus headache, and Lilyanna was starting to feel better, so I decided to bargain with her (thinking it was a safe bet and I wouldn't have to pay up) that if she took a nap, I would take her to the Halloween party at our town's rec center that evening.  Properly motivated, she climbed the stairs almost immediately. I still didn't think she would do it. After all, my children believe that sleep is for the weak! (I'm so lucky...)  I figured she'd look at books for a little while in her bed and then try to come down and tell me she already took a nap.  But when I went upstairs, she was sound asleep!  

Granted, I paid for it later in that she didn't fall asleep until 11:30 pm.

So, I got to take her to the rec center.  It was just she and I, which was fun. In years past, I've always had to navigate the crowds with multiple children, so to just have one to focus on was a pleasure.  We also made it through all the activities in record time because Lilyanna is a line cutter.  I would stand  in line holding her hand explaining that we had to wait for something, when she would see other kids up ahead being let in and make a break for it.  The people opening the doors and gates just assumed she was supposed to be with the group coming in, and by the time I would catch up to her, she was already in.  While I don't condone this sort of thing, it was nice to not spend so much time standing in line.

Predictably, she loved the whole thing. And she really does make a pretty cute little witch.  

10 Things Tuesday

1. I am done Christmas shopping for Benjamin and Lilyanna and am very excited about their presents!  I will be done with the other kids next week.

2. The laundry in this house may devour us all.  Clean laundry, mind you.  The approaching storm made us get laundry clean just in case we lost power (something we do with alarming regularity in this neighborhood every time there is a healthy breeze).

3. Speaking of the approaching storm, I have been something of a nervous wreck for the last few days.  Watching all of my favorite Jersey shore boardwalks, beach towns and haunts get pummeled, not to mention the crazy things going on in North Jersey and NYC, has made me all edgy.  It has taken everything in me to not be in constant communication with friends and relatives in our home state to check in on them. Instead I frequently check in on facebook for updates and keep my phone at hand at all times to check for texts letting us know how everything is going there. I didn't know how to verbalize this anxiety to anyone, until I saw my friend today at preschool drop-off.  She is from NJ, too, and has friends and relatives all along the coast as well.  She totally got it. (Thanks, Val!)

4. Last week I read three books.  This may help explain the massive piles of bags of clean laundry.

5. I'm going to attempt to make gluten free homemade oreos or gluten free homemade twix.  If you clicked on either of those links, you'll see that they aren't actually gf.  I will make a gf sugar cookie mix and go from there.  If they work, I will shout from the rooftops...and possibly gain 5lbs because oreos and twix are two of my favorite things and I've gone without them for more than a year!

6. I do not like candy corn, but every year I find myself snitching a couple just to make sure that is still true.  It's been 36 years.  It seems like at this point I should just accept it.

7. This year I forced Caleb to take tap dance.  I am mean like that.  However, two of his favorite friends signed up as well, so it's become one of the things that he looks forward to each week.  And he practices all week long.  I'm very happy about his happiness.  However, I now have not one, but TWO children who tap dance in the shower!

8. Today it snowed.  Tomorrow we Trick-or-Treat.  I have plans to do cute Halloween dinner things like this and this.  We'll see if that all comes together.

9. I love my belly dancing class and am so glad Heather the Awesome suggested it to me all those years ago.  It's been fun to learn something new and learn a different type of dancing than I've ever been exposed to before.

10. I am obsessed with Private Selection Cherry Cordial Hot Chocolate Mix at Kroger right now.  (Smith's probably has it, too, western folk.)  It warms my tummy every night lately. Try it.

Halloween in High Fashion

If I needed any hint that Lilyanna is very much her own person and not a little copy of me (despite all baby pictures to the contrary), last night was the perfect event to highlight a few of those differences.  Lilyanna cares VERY MUCH about shoes.  This has been the case since she was old enough to wear them.  Now, I understand a love of shoes.  I wear a size 10.5 which is a nearly impossible size to find and thus makes it so I don't have a closet rivaling Imelda Marcos.  Lilyanna may eventually inherit this unfortunate shoe size, but in the meantime, she will happily change shoes 6 times a day according to her mood.  By the time she was 14 months old, Todd was irked that she was taking up more room on the shoe rack than he was.

It was her love for shoes which inspired her costume this year.  That and a sale on sparkly shoes at Target.  $10 sparkly shoes?  Yes, please.

Lilyanna understood how to trick or treat in a way that none of my boys understood this early in their development.  I figured we would go down our street and then come back and join Todd in passing out candy to everyone else.  Not so.  Lilyanna literally pulled me around the block AND insisted on going up every single driveway to EVERY house regardless of whether it was inhabited or not.  We were out almost as long as her brothers.  She also kept her candy basket in her hot little had the whole time.  It probably weighed half as much as she did, but she refused to let go of it, or go home because it was getting too heavy.

It was a little chilly on Halloween and Lilyanna's costume had short sleeves, so I brought her red hoodie along.  We had the following conversation several times:

Me:  Lilyanna, are you cold?

Her: Yeah.

Me: Do you want to wear your jacket?

Her: NOOOOO!!!  Pretty dress!!

While she doesn't have words for this yet, she didn't want to ruin the lines of her outfit!!  This is where she and I wildly diverge.  I am happiest in comfy clothes.  I used to look through clothing catalogs and say, "Ooo, doesn't that look comfortable?", to the eye rolling of the gaggle of gay boys.  At one point Mark declared I wasn't allowed to shop by myself anymore because I dressed myself like "a granola crunchy lesbian" (A term endearingly used by the Queen Mother, John, in reference to me) when left to my own devices.  

It appears Lilyanna has not inherited THAT propensity of mine.

Anyway.  Here is the cuteness:

"Yes, Mommy, I did already eat some chocolate."

"I have my shoes, my dog, and my basket.  LET'S GO!!"

"I am cute."

We reached a neighbor's house who had a fire going in the driveway.  She was freezing by then, and pulled up a chair to sit by the fire and warm up before she headed back to our house.  But she still refused her hoodie.  She is cute, but oh, the opinions!

Halloween 2011

Halloween was an interesting experience this year.  It's usually the holiday that I go all out clever for, but this year with all the sickness and surgeries of this month, I couldn't quite muster up the energy for anything extra.  Decorations only happened because the kids finally told me they were going to do it 2 weeks ago.  I did manage a fun Halloween dinner including mashed potato ghosts with caper eyes, and this was the after school snack which was a HUGE hit and was devoured within minutes of the boys walking in the door.  Frankly, it was a wonder even this happened.  Lilyanna decided over the weekend that she didn't need to sleep anymore in the middle of the night, so I was a bit of a walking zombie on Halloween day.  (That way I didn't need to even don a costume...so, it was mildly convenient...)

Warren stopped by right before Lilyanna and I were about to nap during the day and thoughtfully offered to come over that evening  to take the boys trick or treating.  Here is the lot of them before they went that evening.  His dedication to the task lasted only until a female friend of his came along and he went off with the girl.  

 Notably absent from the picture is Benjamin.  Benjamin learned a hard lesson this Halloween.  As a member of his studio's tap and hip hop dance companies, he agrees to a higher set of rules than everyone taking recreational classes.  One of those rules is that he is only permitted 2 absences per quarter.  He is going to miss one week before Thanksgiving because we'll be out of town, but he squandered one of his other absences in September when he just didn't feel like going.  He didn't feel great, but wasn't sick, but decided to stay home and play that day.  So, no trick-or-treating for him this year.  He was alone in most of his classes on Monday, but he not only recognized the lesson, but also got some really good one on one time with his dance teachers.

Caleb was VERY proud of his glow in the dark skeleton costume and loved running up to his dark bedroom to test it out all afternoon before they went out trick or treating.  Nathaniel was a Ninja with spikes...he had a better name for it, but I don't remember now what it was.  Lilyanna was Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz.  But she gets her own separate post.

Despite all of my hoopla this year, the kids had a great time.  This makes me think that maybe in future years, I can not drive myself so crazy with plans and preparations, and we can still all have an enjoyable holiday.  We'll see if I actually remember this lesson next year.  ;)

What Girls Wear

So many of you have been regaled with my stories of Nathaniel and how he thinks I look like a boy because of my preferred attire of jeans, t-shirts, and flip-flops.

Tonight was the Halloween Party at our community center. When I walked out to the car wearing my costume, Benjamin and Caleb both told me how nice I looked. Nathaniel enthusiastically declared, "Now THAT'S what a girl should look like."

But when he wasn't looking, I put on his helmet and became "Boba Wench"!

So there.