Halloween 2006

Fiona was much more active for Halloween this year than last year. Last year she was so overwhelmed by the experience that we wound up carrying her from house to house. This year she walked all the way up and down the block (she needed help on some of the staircases, which was to be expected) and was strong enough to carry her Halloween bag almost the entire way (until the candy got to be too heavy).

She also had a chance to stop by Fatty's to show her dinosaur costume off there and even hit a few more houses on the way home after the day care party ended.

Which isn't to say she wasn't exhausted by the time bedtime rolled around.

And she's spent the past two days sad that Halloween is over and wondering when she can go trick or treating again. The combination of being exhausted by Halloween itself and being upset that all the excitement is over has made her more short-tempered than usual lately. I'm sure soon we'll be talking about turkeys non-stop and Halloween will fade from memory.

All right, photos. Incidentally, you can click on any photo here to see it enlarged. I'd promise to have them over at the main photo site soon, but we all know how quickly I do updates over there.

The fairy at the top of this post is Camilla, who is about a year older than Fiona, and who Fiona idolizes. We watched a little of their relationship on Halloween as Camilla continued to suggest games for Fiona to play (crawl between my legs, hop on one foot, chase me, I'll chase you). Fiona got frustrated that she didn't know how to hop yet, but unlike when she's at home she didn't resort to tears -- it's amazing what peer pressure will do.


The bumblebee seen here is Isabella, who's about a year younger than Fiona. Watching her on Halloween was a little like watching Fiona last year -- she didn't know what was going on and her parents carried her everywhere. As she learns to talk and play more I'll be curious to see if Fiona treats her the same way Camilla treats Fiona. Fiona is definitely fascinated by the children who are younger than her -- she gets especially excited about seeing the babies at day care (they youngest is about 5 months old).

Along with Camilla, Fiona's best friend at day care is Ethan (called "Ito"). He's in the race car outfit next to Fiona on the stairs to the right (Camilla is behind them). Two stories from Halloween about Ito:

1) His dad couldn't make it, but he called Ito on a cell phone during the post trick or treating party (this happened right after this photo was taken). Ito talked to his Dad for a while, then turned to Fiona and asked if she wanted to talk to his Dad (who she's never met). So Fiona took the phone and spoke into it for a while. By the time the phone was retrieved, Ito's Dad had (rather sensibly) hung up.

2) Ito decided that Fiona should come to see his house after trick or treating was done. In fact, he ran up to his aunt and told her that Fiona was going to come home with them, which led to all sorts of jokes about curfew and what Ito's intentions toward our daughter are. We've been meaning to set up a play date with Ito for a while, so we told Fiona she could see Ito's house sometime soon but not that night. At that point, Fiona burst into tears and we realized that the excitement for the evening was just about over.

So it's off to Thanksgiving now, provided Fiona stops asking to go trick or treating and to get a green dinosaur costume to go with her pink one.