Halloween Monkey Business

Halloween was a busy day for our little monkey. After sleeping in late and a hearty breakfast we went on a short hike in the woods with Grandma and Raz, which ended with a visit to the neighbor goats (and more importantly the goat TRAILER!). Then a recycling run and grocery stop. Lunch and nap were a bit early in order to leave time in the afternoon.

The local mini-mall has an indoor trick-or-treat from 3-6pm, where the merchants sit outside their door to hand out candy to the kids and maybe sneak in a coupon or advertisement for the parents. After his nap I slipped Zane into his Curious George outfit, or tried. Even Dad sometimes has to use all of his powers to convince the 2yr old to do things. I got the suit on but he wasn’t having anything to do with the head gear.

That all changed when we pulled into a parking lot teeming with costumed kids. Zane marveled out loud, “kids costumes!” We popped his Curious George hat on and away we went, to be part of the crowd. He was the only Curious George and got lots of “Hi George!” from the parents and kids.

On the very first trick or treat outing you have one advantage: they haven’t eaten candy and have no idea what they are collecting in the basket. About halfway through our trick or treating that all changed. Someone had given him a shiny 3 Musketeers and he kept grabbing at it. I figured he deserved to have at least one of the treats so we stopped to enjoy the candy bar. Bad idea. Where once he was carrying a basket of colorful objects he now understood that it was full of chocolatey goodness! How can you focus with all of that in reach?

I carried his basket from that point on.

Still, Zane was more focused on other things. There’s the train at one end of the hallway, forever circling it’s track. Kids stop by to look at it and a little curious george fellow would happily inform them that it was a “Train!” and it was on a “Track!” We stopped in the shop that sell trains and toys, where he had the whole setup pretty much to himself.

Then we left and stopped at the playground where he was the only kid in costume (wearing the hat for the first five minutes). Here’s a short playground monkey movie taken after I took the hat off.

We were going to go home at that point but I figured we could swing through town and see if the open house at the fire department had started yet. Sure enough a long line of goblins, princesses, ghosts, and dinosaurs was queued to get inside. More importantly, though, the fire engines were parked outside where a two year old could just walk up and touch them. So we found a parking spot and joined in on the fun until the rain started coming down heavy about forty minutes later.

I’m not sure if it was the candy bar or just a new phase, but feeding him at dinner was nearly impossible. His new “trick” is to spit his food out and make raspberries. We haven’t figured out how to make him stop, but eventually he’ll get hungry enough, right? Afterwards we had a long game of what Zane calls “runaway” (his dad runs away and hides while Zane tries to find him) and then a soak in a hot bubbly tub. After all of that it was pretty easy to put him to bed.