Saturday, November 1, 2008

i would walk 500 miles...

Happy November! Happy NaBloPoMo! And, for those of you participating, Happy NaNoWriMo! For yesterday: Happy Halloween and Happy Nevada Day!

Speaking of festive greetings, here's a short conversation between Pic and me yesterday:

Me: Happy Halloween, baby!

Pic: Happy Halloween, Mamma!

Me: Happy Nevada Day!

Pic: Happy Halloween!

Okay, so she knows where her priorities lie.

On Thursday, Cardo, Pic and I all went to the Halloween party at Pic's school. She got a chance to don her costume a day early and hang out with all of her kids (she calls them "my kids"*). We got there really early but we were able to help set up. The spread was great: pizza, raw veggies, fruits, homemade pumpkin bread, juice and homemade cupcakes (not those nasty, nasty storebought ones with the mounds of Crisco-looking frosting).

Today, Cardo was at work, so Pic and I were left to ourselves for most of the day. Cardo's car is still sucking big time, so he took mine to work. After I finally forced myself into some kind of conscious state, Pic and I readied ourselves and headed out, on foot, for Too Expensive Grocery Store That I Actually Kind of Despise. (It's the closest grocery store and we were running late and were without (motorized) wheels. We bought frijoles, arroz y galletas de animalitos and headed over to Starbucks. (The Purple Bean Too closed. Depressing, but not shocking...which makes it more depressing.) I had a salted caramel hot chocolate (someone please explain to me why I still think that I like hot chocolate more than I do, which is barely) and part of a pumpkin scone. Neither of my items were that great and I ended up trashing some of my scone. Pic had a petite vanilla scone. She seemed to like it.

At home, I cajoled the child until she finally took all of the toys scattered downstairs and deposited them upstairs. I made the beans and rice. We ate bananas and kind of watched the episode of Gilmore Girls featuring Rory's twenty-first birthday. I chatted with my older sister, who at last talked to Pic on the phone. I had Pic answer the phone and just about the first thing she said was "Who are you?" Once she'd established who she was talking to, she made certain that Auntie L had seen her Halloween pictures.

At about three-thirty, we headed out for our walk to a local business/office that was hosting trick-or-treating. Pic walked about half of the way there, but I finally made her sit in the stroller because we were taking forever. Outside of the building we happened to see some aquaintances from storytime and we trick-or-treated with them. Our hosts had done a fabulous job. The interior of the building was completely decked out. Almost every employee was in costume and they were all incredibly nice. It only took us about a half-hour to get through the whole place, but Pic got a good amount of candy. She remembered to say "Trick or treat" most of the time (the rest of the time, she lead with "What are you for Halloween?") and she mostly remembered to say "thank you" without me having to remind her. I kept telling her, "We should come back here next year," and then I kept remembering that we probably won't live here anymore next year.

We walked home, grabbed the rice and beans and headed right back out. Ms J had invited us over for dinner, trick-or-treating and a movie. About halfway to Ms J's, Pic fell asleep in the stroller. I tucked one of my jackets around her and pulled the shade down to protect her face from the very light rain that was beginning to fall. We made decent time on this walk and Cardo even made it there from work in time to eat with us (okay, so he had eaten at work so he didn't really eat there, but he was present). We had tacos, burritos, rice, beans and taco dip. Ms J also made pumpkin squares and apple cider for post-trick-or-treating treats. We had quite a group going out, although some left shortly after we set out on our candy quest. Both Pic and Baby K had a blast going door-to-door. Pic was enthusiastic with her "trick or treat" plea. Baby K ambled up the driveways, saying "knock, knock." They both said "thank you" after they received their treats. Mr M was the lucky one who got to pull both of the kidlets around in Baby K's wagon because my peach of a child decided that she was "too scared" to not sit in the wagon. There was a lot of maneuvering in and out of the wagon and there were several escape attempts by each child.

Overall, Pic's first time out trick-or-treating was great.** We had some sketchy moments at the beginning where she wanted to cry hysterically and I wanted to melt down, but we got over that. We didn't stick around for It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, although Pic certainly wanted to. It would have been nice, but we needed to get all of us home for some much-needed rest. (Oh, and because Cardo had joined us, I didn't have to walk home, which was very nice, indeed.)

I'm already looking forward to next Halloween, though.



my little monkey princess, showing off her tail
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* Dooce wrote at some point that her daughter called her preschool classmates, "My kids." I remember thinking how cute this was. Then, one day, Pic came home and started using the same term. I guess this affectionately possessive feeling is somewhat universal among kids.

** Yes, this was Pic's first time trick-or-treating. We managed to avoid it her first three Halloweens. I'm not really opposed to it or anything. We just didn't take her. I'm glad this time was so great.

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Only three more days until voting ends. My anxiety has ebbed for now. We'll see what next week brings.

2 comments:

kate said...

I love this blog entry! And Pic is frickin adorable. :)

I, also, do not know about 80% of the songs on that list BTW. That's why so many of them are not even touched. Haha.

The Furie Queene said...

That Monkey Princess costume is beyond adorable. :)