Trick or Treat, Smell My Feet

And finally the night we were all waiting for.  The Big Dance.  The final hoorah.  Halloween night.  We had a potluck dinner with our cul-de-sac neighbors, which pretty much meant starting the evening off with sugar.  It was like a cake appetizer before the candy main course.  Perfect.

But I'm sure you can guess who didn't even mind one little bit.

Then it was time to debut the costumes.  Micah & Sam's you've seen before but Hudson was eager to show off his new 'do as a punk rocker baby.

I originally had sprung a whopping $5 at a consignment sale and bought him a monster costume.  It ended up being too small so I sold it back to another consignment shop and bought a can of blue hair dye (washable of course).  And this was our final product...

I'm also too cheap to buy those "Baby's First Halloween" onesies because, realistically speaking, your kid will only wear it once.  So I made my own.  Post-it notes are so multi-functional!  The only downside was that Hudson ate his sign right after I took this picture.

I thought I wasn't supposed to get this look from my son for at least another two years.  5 months old and already a pro at the "Seriously, mom?" scowl.

Sam wasn't too sure what to make of his blue haired brother, but he decided to love him all the same.

Despite his indifference to dressing up in previous days, Micah finally agreed to put on his dragon-saurus costume.  That's the name I came up with since I still can't decide if it's a dragon or a dinosaur.  Either way, he's still the cutest prehistoric/mythical creature on the block.

And oh the jubilee that little guy had when his much-revered 6 year old friend taught him the "Trick or Treat, Smell my Feet" song.  Once he'd get to the underwear part, he'd just die laughing.  

I agree that it might seem like we've dived into the world o' Halloween head first.  But I've tried to find some good, clean fun for the buddies to make the most of this season in America.  There won't be many block parties and trick-or-treating once we get back to China.  

This special opportunity instilled a little bit more vigor in my photography.  And I'm not talking about finally getting a lesson on using the elusive M mode.  What I mean is unabashedly bribing Micah to go stand next to Daddy or hug brother one more time.  Bribing him with things like cookies and taking pictures of dog poop (his request) or the dog in the action of making the poop (his request again).  Anything for my son.  OK so really it's anything for the picture I want but it's all the same, right?  It seemed worth it to get the kid to hold still for 8 seconds for pictures like this:

Then we gathered all the little boys of the cul-de-sac and headed off for our wild tromp through the neighborhood.

I probably shouldn't say "through the neighborhood" though.  That's a bit too generous.  We made it up & down one street.  But if you've ever seen the street my parents live on, you'll know that's still an impressive feat with three year olds in tow.  Many of the houses here are perched atop cliffs and require lots of stairs to even get to the front door.  We only saw two other kids out on our street.  In fact, I think most of the neighbors are so used to getting zero traffic that they don't even bother staying home to pass out candy.  And no courtesy bowl either!  But the kids still enjoyed the neighbors that were home.

Especially Micah who picked up the art of trick-or-treating quite quickly.  He'd knock on the door with his friends, collect his candy, and then sprint off yelling, "Next house!  Next house!"  Sam, on the other hand, was more interested in turning trick-or-treating into a tour of homes as he would just go inside the neighbor's house as soon as the door opened.  I saw a lot of living rooms and gave a lot of apologies.

We made it home by 8:15 or so and dumped out the loot.  I let them choose one treat to eat but helpfully guided an indecisive Sam toward the organic bunny graham crackers one mom handed out.  I love that mom.  

Nearly the first words out of Micah's mouth this morning were a request for candy.  But, other than that, they've both seemed to forget about their bounty within the pumpkin.  We'll see how long that lasts.  

So we'll now retire our frog & dragon-saurus costumes, knowing that they did good by us during  Halloween 2012.