Early Trick or Treating

On Saturday, the Avenue was hosting a little Halloween celebration with many of the stores giving out candy to kids in costume from 3-5 p.m. Luckily, Eli's nap time cooperated and we were able to catch the last hour of festivities. I coached him on saying, "Trick or Treat", "Thank You" and "Happy Halloween." For the most part he did well on his first taste of trick or treating. He had fun and was intrigued by the candy. But, at times, and especially towards the end he seemed overwhelmed. He always gets a little intimidated when strangers try to engage him, especially when they try to touch him. To complicate matters, a lot of the preschool age children thought he was a celebrity. A few tried to come up to us and talk to him as if he were Elmo. That perplexed him, to say the least. Then, at the end, we realized he didn't get any chocolate. He's never been exposed to non chocolate candy, and kept taking pieces of candy out of his bucket and asking me if they were chocolate. He took out "Smarties" and Scott told him they were a little like Teething Tablets, so he could chew them like he did his Teething Tablets. He hated it. He tried to chew a piece, and then actually starting crying. He opened his mouth, stuck out his tongue like he wanted me to scrape it off. I gave him a drink of milk instead. Needless to say, he didn't try any more candy. So that we wouldn't think trick or treating was a complete bust, Scott bought a piece of chocolate at the book store, and had the ladies put it in his bucket. He was of course very happy about that.











The funny thing was when we got home he perked up right away when I mentioned going next door to show Madeline, our neighbor and his new best friend, his costume. He ran into the back yard asked her to come too, and had a great time playing with her. He had transformed back into his normal, silly self in minutes.






Then, after playing hard, he took off his hood, and had sweaty hair. Madeline and I commmented on how he must be hot in his costume. He decided to take it off right then in the back yard. There was no stopping him, we just laughed and took pictures instead.