One Thousand Words

Today isn’t just the first day of school in Chicago, it’s Niko’s first ever day of school. He’s starting preschool at our neighborhood school. Since Chicago is so big, there’s a bunch of little (and medium and large, his school is actually pretty large) school buildings and you default into a specific school based on your address. But there’s also Selective schools that, for higher grades, are Gifted or STEM or International Baccalaureate or various flavor of Charter or what have you. It’s incredibly hard to get into Selective schools in Chicago. Like, there’s literally hundreds more kids who qualify for and want to get into separate Gifted programs than there are available slots (Niko’s school has a Gifted track, but I don’t think all neighborhood schools do). We are going to have to do some serious thinking while Niko is in kindergarten about what kind of school we want him to go to for first grade and on, because generally speaking if you don’t get into your first choice school in first grade (or 6th or freshman year or whenever the school’s lowest grade is) you’re never going to get in. There’s just so much competition, so many students waiting to get in. Which means a lot of kids start really specific types of schooling (STEM, Classical, IB, a school with a fantastic music program, a school with an emphasis on physical education, etc) when they’re like 6… which is ridiculously early to make those kinds of decisions. So we might just go with the flow and keep him at his neighborhood school and supplement at home and with museum memberships and stuff. But then if he’s at a neighborhood school, will he get into a competitive high school and then college? I kind of resent that I’m feeling pressure NOW, when he’s FOUR, to do everything right so he has a successful adult academic career (which, I mean, that assumes he even WILL go to college and not just, like, become an auto mechanic or electrician or something else he’d go to a trade school and apprentice for).

I have an Anxiety Disorder and tend to spiral into alternate universes of WHAT IFs at the drop of a hat, so I’m trying really hard to just… Let Go and focus on the important thing right now, which is to shepherd Niko through preschool. The school is being less than helpful by waiting until super late to send out official notices (including school supply lists, nearly creating a financial issue for us), and not telling us ahead of time which door in a building the size of a full city block we should enter for his first day of school. I mean, if they’d just included the notice “Use door X which is on street Y” we wouldn’t have started the first day of school literally soaking with sweat and flushed from walking 4 additional blocks, quickly, in 90 degree heat. I’m also a little peeved that I signed him up for morning classes and they plunked him into afternoon, which take place riiiiight when he’s normally taking a nap. But there were too many kids signed up for AM so whatever.

But now we know what door to go to and what to do if he wants to eat lunch in the cafeteria first and we plan to have donuts or ice cream every Monday after school, and we know for sure which class he’s going to be in and which time, and that he’s going to have 3 field trips this year (the zoo, the Shedd Aquarium, Navy Pier). He’s got his own cubby and he’s met most of his class mates (and WOW there is a girl in his class who is a future Homecoming Queen/Lady President) and he’s gone on record as saying he won’t cry tomorrow when I drop him off and leave him there. So we’ll see how it goes.

School is a half mile away so unless I hang out up there (at the school? at Dunkin Donuts down the street?) I’ll be walking 2 miles a day to drop off/pick up. I’m not looking forward to doing that come winter. But we’ll survive.

Technorati Tags: 4 year old, chicago, chicago public school system, parenting, preschool, school, toddler

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Jason Good has a blog post about reasons his 3 year old is flipping out, and it’s pretty funny. It digs right into just how irrational little kids are, how confusing and overwhelming the world can be for them and how confusing and overwhelming they can be for their parents/caregivers. I like his blog. He’s obviously an involved and loving parent who knows his kids well and is able to put a humorous yet understanding spin on daily life. So when I first saw links to a tumblr about why a kid is crying I assumed it was a link to his site. It wasn’t. Instead, it’s a collection of photos of a crying 2 or 3 year old with a caption as to why he’s crying. The kid cries a lot, apparently. And the kid’s parent takes time to photograph the kid while crying and note down why he’s crying (milk’s in the wrong color cup, a piece of cheese is the wrong shape, etc). There’s a lot of people who think it’s really funny.

I don’t.

It’s really, really hard being a kid– especially a young kid. A really little kid flips out when his cheese is the wrong shape or her milk’s in the wrong cup because 1) that means it’s just plain WRONG and/or 2) that’s one thing in a huge world they have control over and now they’ve lost that control. Good’s blog post feels empathic. It reads as a guy who understands that it’s hard to be a little kid, and that it can be frustrating to be the parent of a little kid, but if you step back you can see the humor in the situation. The tumblr feels… I don’t know. My mind lights on words like “cruel” and “predatory” but I don’t think that’s quite it. Friends of mine suggest it’s something that was designed to go viral and sure enough, the creator and his family were on TV concerning it. But what’s the difference between Good’s blog post and the tumblr?

I think the biggest thing is that Good put in effort after the fact to list reasons his kid was flipping out and the sheer number, and ridiculousness of them, builds and is funny. And a lot of stuff he talks about were things he was doing with his kid, interacting with his kid. The tumblr is quick snapshots of a kid that already looks stressed out accompanied by one-sentence descriptions. It feels like the tumblr author prioritizes taking a photo of his kid in crises to helping his kid in crises solve the problem. Good talks about his kid, the tumblr author complains about his kid.

And, you know, sometimes parents and caregivers need to vent. Kids can be frustrating, challenging, hard work. And when parents and caregivers complain they’re frequently abused for doing so, especially if they’re women. (In fact, one friend of mine asked if the tumblr would be as popular if it were a mom writing it; dads get way more leeway to be less than saints. I think it’d fly as long as she was white, affluent, and joked about how much wine she drinks. Several “mommybloggers” fitting that description landed book deals based on their HILARZ discussions of alcoholic parenting, then checked into rehab. That really wouldn’t have worked for them if they weren’t a certain type.) So I’m all for finding and creating safe spaces to vent, to unload, to ask for help. But that really doesn’t feel like it’s what’s happening.

In my experience, which is fairly limited to my own relatively laid back 4 year old and some babysitting (age ranges from 1 1/2-7 years old) most freak outs can be nipped in the bud by remembering HALT. Is the kid Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired? If your kid (or adult) starts getting on edge and acting brittle, look at the circumstances. When did they last eat? Do they need to calm down and sleep? Do they need attention? Are they angry/frustrated and need to express that and then calm down before proceeding? For really little kids, also check to see if they need to use the bathroom or are generally over whelmed. Being mindful of your kid’s needs can go a long way toward creating a smoother life for everyone involved. This isn’t some magic bullet that will solve all your problems, obviously.

It’s also important to remember that little kids don’t have adult brains. If they ask for a piece of cheese and you give them the “wrong” shape of cheese? That is not what they asked for. Until they make certain synaptic connections, they cannot translate that. It’s not possible. Their brains are growing, and they aren’t just increasing in size they’re increasing connections and the ability to make deductions. They have very little control over their lives, so cling to what they CAN control: what color cup they use, what shirt they wear. They are just learning new skills and get frustrated easily because what they WANT to do is so much harder than it should be because they are still learning how to do it. When little kids flip out, it’s because they can’t cope with the world at the moment. Part of maturing is learning to cope with it, even when frustrating… and part of parenting is teaching kids how to cope with a frustrating world.

Or you could take photos of your sobbing child and post it to tumblr, I guess.

Edited to add:
I was talking about this with a couple other people and more than one person compared it (negatively) to The Honest Toddler. Good and THT both discuss parenting and specific child-centered situations, and tend to poke fun at adults, parents, and specific styles of parenting (generally affluent, privileged parenting) while the tumblr pokes fun at a kid… a kid who’s defenseless at the moment. Instead of holding the powerful up to scrutiny, it holds the defenseless up. It’s a bit exploitative. And it bothers me that there’s just this constant string of negative photos of a little kid having problems.

Technorati Tags: parenting, toddler, tumblr

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Now that Thanksgiving is over, the Christmas Season can officially begin.

Ugh.

Because Niko is only 3 1/2, we don’t really have any solid Christmas traditions for him yet. Everything’s still kind of up in the air. Especially since my Christmas traditions and Nesko’s Christmas traditions are so vastly different in many respects (mine involved no tree until very close to Christmas day, taking it down on the 26th, and lots of Mass; his involves very little religion and an entirely different date). We know from past experience that putting a tree up soon after Thanksgiving and leaving it up until Orthodox Christmas triggers a lot of mental distress in me. So we’ve talked about doing non-tree decorating and then putting the actual tree up later.

Our current plan involves cleaning and prepping the house but not doing any decorating until after Nesko’s Slava, which is St Nikolas, on December 19. That weekend we can decorate and put the tree up and be all CHRISTMAS! YAY! and then leave everything up until the weekend after January 7th, which is Orthodox Christmas. We will probably do Christmas Stockings and one gift (or maybe gifts with my parents) in December, but save most of the unwrapping and celebration for January. Honestly, if I can spend the 25th sitting on my ass eating Pad Thai with glass noodles and watching shitty movies, I’ll be happy. Nesko has to work, of course, so we couldn’t really do anything big if we wanted to.

Speaking of stockings and Santa, I think one family tradition we’re going to establish is that Santa only brings small things, things that will fit in a stocking. I grew up with a kind of unhealthy Christmas gift-giving situation, and I really want to keep the emphasis of Christmas off of gifts and onto stuff like family togetherness blah blah blah. Among his stocking gifts this year will be a bunch of tumbled semi-precious stones because he’s still really into rocks and pretty things. I don’t know if he’s quite up to one of those open-it-yourself geode kits, especially as he managed to destroy one geode I gave him.

How do you handle Christmas, if you celebrate it? How do you blend differing family traditions? Does Santa visit your house? How do you manage Santa gifts?

Technorati Tags: child, christmas, family, holidays, parenting, santa, toddler, traditions

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Halloween is On! Its! Way! and I have no idea what Niko will dress up as. His current suggestions include:

• Shaun The Sheep
• Bitzer the Dog, from Shaun The Sheep
• A cat
• The Brown Line – no, the Red Line. No! The purple line!
• A crossing gate
• A steam engine!
• A dinosaur
• A conductor
• A dump truck
• a ghost
• A snail with a big shell
• A penguin

Oh, these ideas? They are all from one day.

Other things he wants to dress up as include various imaginary friends of his, and a character from a short story (by Betsy Byars) he read that is a tiny cat (Finley Nox) who dressed up as a watermelon but really it was a cucumber because watermelons don’t come that small. So he wants to dress up as a cat dressed up as a watermelon but really it’s a cucumber. OF COURSE. That will be a SNAP to do!

I was actually pretty jazzed about the sheep idea because I can make a sheep costume. Just sew a bunch of cotton balls to a white shirt! So we went to Target where… they did not have white t-shirts in the appropriate size. A size smaller? A size larger? Oh hell yeah! Overflowing! The size that would fit over his black sweater? All gone. Well then. We perused the costume aisle and he flirted with the idea of being a butterfly, a fairy princess, a pink sparkly cat with wings, a ninja, or just plain buying a be-ribboned sparkly star-topped wand so he’d have a new “hitting stick” (that is my hitting stick! I use it to hit things! I mean no, that is my waving stick. I use it to wave good bye to people.”). I lingered over a $30 dinosaur costume but can’t really justify spending $30 on a costume. Then I saw a papier-mâché cat mask for like $2 or some cheap price and asked him if he wanted to be a cat. He said yes. I’m going to pick up some (more, we’re running out) tempera paint and he can paint the mask himself and we’ll get a sweat suit or track suit or something in similar colors and a feather boa for his tail and TADA, cat.

And maybe I’ll get a big oblong balloon and make a papier-mâché cucumber and he can be Finley Nox after all. Or we’ll toss a sheet over him and he can be a ghost cat.

What are you/your kids going as?

Technorati Tags: costumes, halloween, parenting, toddler

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I grew up in a kitchen with a parent who was a professional cook for many years, which means that a lot of very basic knife (and general kitchen) safety was burned into my brain from a young age. Never put knives in the sink. Never run with a knife. Always pass a knife to someone handle first. Never touch a knife blade. Dull knives are more dangerous than sharp knives. Don’t use a too-small knife. I even know how to hone a knife on a whetstone. As I’ve said earlier, some of my earliest memories are helping my mom in the kitchen and I don’t really remember a time when I wasn’t actively helping.

Our current kitchen isn’t very usable, for a number of reasons, so I’ve been doing the bulk of my cooking solo. Even though Niko is at that magical age where he wants to help and is capable of helping in some ways, I’ve been curtailing that because it’s just so inconvenient for me. And that’s a wrong headed attitude to have, frankly. So lately I’ve been asking him to help me load and unload the dishwasher, put his dishes in the sink, measure coffee into the coffee maker… and cut red peppers.

Yes, I’ve given my baby a knife.

A toddler stands on a wooden scaffolding called “The Learning Tower,” which raises her height to be safely able to work at a kitchen counter. Image taken from the Learning Tower website.

Several people have mentioned using things like the “Learning Tower,” which is a wooden scaffolding that costs quite a bit of money. If we had the money and the space for it I’d totally consider it, but as it is, Niko is very happy on his 2-step stepladder. We pull it right up to the counter and we practice handing a knife back and forth handle first, and then I give him strips of red pepper to slice in half.

We work on paying attention to what he’s doing, to the cutting board and the peppers. We work on how to hold the knife in his hand. We work on remembering that the blade is sharp. We work on how to hold the food steady. We work on not going too fast. And then he hands the knife carefully back to me and we put the peppers in a bowl, and he eats them all because red peppers are basically the bomb.

I know there are dull knives that people use for toddlers. There’s some plastic lettuce specialty knife that a lot of people laud for its dull blade and inability to puncture skin. I considered getting one of those, but in the end decided that with close supervision using a real knife was the better choice. Knives are sharp. I want my child very aware of that, at all times. I want him to know knife safety, and I want him to develop cooking skills that will last him through his life. If you have young children in your life you may very well make a different choice, and I’d love to hear what you have chosen or will chose. But Niko’s enjoying cutting up his own peppers, and he’s enjoying helping me, and he’s learning a lot while doing so.

How old were you when you started using a sharp knife?

Would you let a 3 year old use a knife?

What would you do?

Technorati Tags: child, cooking, kitchen safety, knife safety, parenting, safety, teaching, toddler

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Niko pretty much only watches 3 shows: “Word World,” “Sid The Science Kid,” and “Adventure Time.” Yes, yes, I know. One of these things is not like the other. He also watches “Dinosaur Train” when I need to take a shower or something, because it’s on Netflix. (“Adventure Time” is On Demand but some episodes require him to sit in my lap and ask if the Snow Golem is going to fall into the water and where is that Fire Wolf’s mama and tata?) He’s picked up a lot from the shows he watches, including the phrase “Sweet Babies!” when he’s excited or angry about something. As cusses go, that is a GREAT ONE and I approve and it’s way better than him picking up on my hissed “JESUS FUCK”s and “DAMMIT”s when he headbutts me in the eye, blacking it and bending my glasses, or when he tumbles off me and lands square on the edge of my foot, grinding the bones into the ground while also clawing his toenails along my soft foot skin. I… I may need to take out a restraining order on this guy.

Anyway, “Word World” is an educational show that works on letter recognition, phonics, and simple spelling. We watch it together and I help prompt him to make letter sounds/say what letters make sounds and after an episode we’ll go over letter shapes and sounds and maybe practice spelling some words. Personally, I’m terrible with phonics. I’m slightly deaf in one ear, which may be part of it, but a friend of mine who is a teacher casually mentioned once that it sounds like I have an auditory processing disorder as well, which frankly, I find easy to believe. I have a really difficult time discerning, say, the difference between “ch,” “sh,” and “dg/j” which is a pretty big problem with my attempts to learn my husband’s language which has TWO “ch”s, “sh”s, and “dg/j”s. I SAY the sounds right, but when I hear a word I’ve never seen spelled, I have a hard time figuring out if it’s got a ch, sh, or dg/j in it. I have a really hard time sounding words out to spell them.

But! I try to rise above that, and since phonics works for teaching most kids (and adults!) to read and write, I’m using it as best I can with Niko. We look at letters and make their sounds and talk about digraphs and stuff and we sound out words when we’re reading. Niko’s gotten to the OH MY GAWD ADORABLE phase where he “spells out” words totally the wrong way, just with random letters. It just about makes my heart explode with cute. Like, if I were an anime character, my eyes would be huge and shiny and have little hearts and stars floating in them.

This morning, he asked me to spell the word “Jet.” I sat down with a crayon and piece of paper and we said the word slowly together and then broke it down into pieces. Juh! Eh! Tuh! JET! He was able to break it down to sounds, and then figure out what letters made the sounds. I wrote the letters down and TADA! Jet! He spelled it himself, with encouragement/support from me.

I’ve grappled my entire life with poor spelling. Spellcheck is basically my best friend and we’ve had several torrid affairs. I learned to read when I was 3, but remember struggling incredibly hard with spelling in first grade. I failed test after test after test.I think the highest grade for spelling I’ve ever gotten has been a C+, and that was with much studying and writing the words out many times, etc. It’s so frustrating to work that hard and still fail! So I’m really surprised and delighted that phonics seems to be working for Niko, that he understands it, it clicks, and he can link letters with sounds and smash them all together to make words. Nobody mentioned the term “learning disability” to me until I was in high school, and even then it wasn’t an official diagnosis. I really nope Niko doesn’t have to deal with the same fucked up brain crap I’ve had to cope with my entire life, but if he does? I’m totally looking out for it– and for him. And today? He spelled “jet” and that’s just awesome.

Technorati Tags: parenting, phonics, reading readiness, toddler

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I decided, today, that I’d let the clean clothing linger in laundry baskets long enough, and it was time to fold it and put it away. To be honest, the impetus has something to do with the amount of dirty laundry that needs to be turned into clean laundry, and I need the laundry baskets (which were filled with clean clothing) to make that transition possible. It’s a pain in the butt folding laundry when Niko is around/awake because you know how little kids like to knock over block towers? He likes to knock over– or wallow on!– towers of folded clothing. It’s basically the opposite of helpful.

I managed to get everything folded with a minimum of falling/scolding (dear child: no, me folding laundry while sitting on the bed is NOT an open invitation to JUMP on the bed, why do you keep doing that, you know jumping is not allowed) and then I took some pyjamas and socks into Niko’s room to put in his dresser. I came back to get his pants and shirts and found Niko walking toward me, several pair of pants held in the mouth of his butterfly hand puppet.

“I help you!” he said. “Butterfly help you, mama.”

I thanked him and asked if I could carry the pants, and went back into our bedroom to get the rest of his clothing. He and butterfly then kind of… herded me… down the hall toward his room, butterfly’s open mouth clamped on me. I was puzzled for a bit, and frustrated because dude, get out of the way, why are you walking so close, when I realized they were helping me carry the laundry.

Well then.

I shoved his pants in his drawer and handed him shirts, two at a time, and he plopped those in the drawer as well, butterfly holding them in its mouth. It’s not the tidiest drawer in existence, but what do you expect from a toddler and a butterfly?

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I was all set to write a little congratulatory “btw,  Niko’s sleeping in his own little bad, KAZAM!” post but then last night he joined us in our bed around tiny-o:clock because “monsters” had “eaten his rug” and “turned Carl (his stuffed elephant) into a bear and Carl was sad.” We had a talk about monsters and how to get rid of them and everything seemed ok, and then he spent the day with my in-laws and came home and apparently his room is infested with monsters and dinosaurs.

Which, ok, my friend Kate thinks that is ridiculous because duh monsters are afraid of dinosaurs and dinosaurs are extinct, and I totally agree with her, but try explaining that to a two year old, right? They don’t logic well.

So I managed to get him settled in bed, reading him “I Am A Bunny” and “The Thomas And Friends Year Book” (which is a freaking catalog of Thomas And Friends toys only with no prices ha ha surprise suckers! That thing your kid totally wants is US$600!) and then the freak outs began, fueled in part by being over tired and possibly by running a low fever.

Because I am the meanest person ever, I sternly forbade Niko from sleeping in the big bed, and I turned out the light and left him to sniffle and tremble in fear.

Half an hour later he tucked himself neatly and calmly into our big bed while I faffed about online.

I let him fall asleep and then scooped him up in the most hilariously clumsy way and dragged him back to his room. He woke up half way there and resisted as much as a half-asleep toddler can resist, but frankly, he was having difficulty sitting up let alone pulling another escape attempt. So he soon crashed and I haven’t heard anything else from him.

We rearranged some furniture in his room, and that may have triggered this, or it might just be a completely random totally awesome toddler brain thing. I have no idea. It’s also possible that he is just a super lucky kid who inherited my completely rad night terrors. Yay!

Later on I’m gonna talk about Cingular and our decision to take Niko off of it. It’s pretty boring, but mostly I want to record it for myself. STAY TUNNED FOR MORE GRIPPING TALES OF TODDLER MEDICATION.

Technorati Tags: nightmares, parenting, sleep, toddler

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We’ve pretty successfully transitioned Niko to sleeping in his own bed, although he wakes up a few times a night and needs attention, and putting him down can take an hour or more which WHEE FUN! Sometimes I think “FUCK IT” because he’d gotten to a point, sleeping in our bed, where he’d go down in just a few minutes and I hate a drawn out bedtime ritual (which, just throwing this out there, is the worst when Nesko does it because that means Nesko is home, and Niko wants to party with him instead of sleep).

Sometimes Niko wakes up early in the morning and gets into bed with us/me and I don’t really care. He snoozes a bit longer, I get to continue lying in bed with no demands on me, whatever. Usually Nesko is already out of bed and getting ready for or already left for work. Then, the other day, Niko woke up and got into bed with us at 5:00 am after a very long and protracted falling asleep and also woke up several times during the night and Nesko and I were both too tired to put him back to bed. I’d forgotten just how much I hate sleeping with a toddler. He rolled around like a rotisserie toddler. He kicked me repeatedly, in the “drumming his heels on me” way. He got his fingers tangled in my hair and yanked it while thrashing around. He pushed at me. He tried to burrow his head inside of me. He stuck his feet under me. WHAT FRESH HELL IS THIS.

It really strengthened my resolve to not let him into bed with us unless it’s morning and we’re just chillin’, even when he cries and says he’s lonely, even when he begs us to sleep with him “just a little bit” and pats his pillow and says we can lie down “on this spot right here.” Fffffffffffffffffff. NO MORE.

Does that sound cruel? He’s actually pretty good about sleeping by himself, especially at nap time. Nap time is usually not a struggle at all. In fact, he’ll finish eating lunch and say he’s ready to sleep now, and we calmly do our business and read two stories and I tuck him in and make sure he has his water and his objects of affection (Canada the moose, Carl the elephant, Other Carl the other elephant, Medo the panda bear (“medo” is how you say “bear” ins Srpski, so he has a bear named bear), Emily the Steam Engine and her Tender, his Special Blue Blanket) and give him some hugs and kisses and that’s it. He sacks out for 2-5 hours and while I can’t get anything done in the kitchen, I can pick up the living room or the dining room or work on lesson plans for the student I tutor or just sit on my butt and surf the net. You know. Whatever.

The little bits of regressing he’d been doing (crawling, and referring to himself as “a crawling baby!”, needing every single pacifier in the entire house in bed with him, asking for a bottle– something he gave up when he was 13 months old, with no fight at all) are easing off, although he still wants his pacifier ALL THE TIME when we’d already weaned him during the day, and he’s chewing on EVERYTHING including his fingers/hands (is he teething? HE HAS ALL HIS TEETH. Any teeth coming in are UNWANTED EXTRAS).

And at night, I stretch out in the middle of the bed (not the edge of it) and curl up with my husband and nobody kicks me or punches me. It is GLORIOUS.

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We dressed Niko up as a train engineer/conductor, which is a super easy costume that can be reworn year round. We slapped a white shirt and striped overalls on him. How easy is that? Very easy. He also had a striped cap from “Day Out With Thomas” that we held onto as a special Halloween costume component surprise and although he loves it (actual quote: “It THOMAS! I love it that hat! Oh! Thomas!”) he refuses to actually wear it. Also a red kerchief would have completed the look but we didn’t have one of those either… Nesko’s sister moved on the 31st and a lot of Nesko’s time was taken up with helping her locate, clean, and move furniture so we didn’t have a lot of opportunities to go bits and bobs shopping. We also had an orange jackolantern bucket (I have no idea where it came from) lying around so that was useful, too.

We went around our block and up and over one other block. There were a lot of houses that were decorated, including one that had one of those expensive inflatable decorations, but the interior lights were off and nobody answered the door. Now, perhaps they simply weren’t home from work yet or were out with their own kids, but it feels like kind of a cheat to have a decorated house and nobody giving out treats. If you don’t want to give out candy or participate, that’s fine… a LOT of houses were dark and we didn’t try them, assuming they weren’t into the Halloween spirit of things. But to decorate and then not be home? Eh. DISAPPOINTING.

I was worried that people wouldn’t know what Niko was. Would they think he was just wearing some overalls? But no, pretty much everyone got it and told him how cute he was, even when he tried to barge into their houses. He said “Trick or Treat” unprompted and said “Thank You” when reminded. One lady near the river was giving out full size candy bars; one dude was giving out pretzels. We stopped into a few shops and a nursing home/rehab center thinking they might have a program for the residents and they didn’t but the front desk had candy.

There’s this tiny house set way back from the street that looks like it used to be the carriage house or guest house or something for the gorgeous bungalow next to it. It’s surrounded by giant trees and instead of grass it’s all hosta and ivy and lilly of the valley and other shade loving plants, the long walk lined with little solar lanterns. It looks like something out of a fairy tale. It’s got a gate that is always closed, with a sign asking people to keep the gate shut/keep out, but last night the gate was open so we tried the house. The dude who answered the door gave Niko a FISTFUL of chocolates and also a bunch of pennies, and I know pennies get a bad rap as a Halloween thing, but Niko is at that age where pennies are glorious things. The guy was really nice and we chatted a bit and then we moved on; the huge houses flanking him were dark and nobody answered the door.

Our street in particular and neighborhood in general has a lot of multi-unit buildings, which tend not to be active in candy giving. Last year, for instance, we got zero callers and I didn’t see anyone out on the street, either. We’d discussed going to a different neighborhood for trick or treating, but I’m glad we didn’t; I’m glad we stuck close to home. Niko didn’t get much of a haul, but we only covered about 2 1/2 blocks and that included some businesses. He’s a toddler, he doesn’t need a lot of candy. To be very honest, most of what he got will be going into Nesko’s lunch bag.

We had fruit snack pouches to give out but nobody came while we were home, which isn’t surprising as we live in a 2-flat. We didn’t buy any Halloween candy this year because we’re boycotting slavery-produced chocolate in general and Hershey’s products specifically (they manufacture a lot of stuff that’s sold under brands other than “Hershey”). So once the chocolate currently in our house is gone, that’s it  unless we buy fair trade stuff, which on the one hand tends to be more expensive… but on the other hand tends to also be higher quality and tastier.

Niko keeps asking me if he can go trick or treating again. Sometimes he comes up to me with his orange bucket and says trick or treat and I stick something in it that’s at hand (a book, a sock, a nail file, a block, WHATEVER) and he thinks that’s hilarious. I’ve tried telling him that Trick Or Treating only happens once a year, and that next up we have Thanksgiving and then Christmas. He said “Oh, that when I get Rusty and the Boulder!” That is the Big Gift we purchased for him a while ago and stashed in the office. We have not mentioned it around him. I don’t know if he’s seen the side of the box and guessed or is just wishing really, really hard. It’s hard to tell with him, sometimes.

Technorati Tags: halloween, parenting, toddler

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