Finding Joy in Snarkville

There will be 1,000’s of posts today about candy crashes in the blogosphere.  Sorry to have to add one more to the mix — but this is SPECIAL — no really, stop looking at me like that.

Sidenote the first: I had a lunchtime event to go to, hence my Smart Ass costume (no, Beth no pocket protector involved, however in a stroke of genius, I added my son’s little bow tie and a yarny tail — happy?).  I won a prize!  Well, actually, I won an iPod shuffle (RED, thank you) and now the thoughts of what the heck to do with it occur.  We could give it to Duke, which seems like the right match of his iPod skills to machine, BUT the Queen Mum is joining us in the Mac world and I know she’d love an iPod, BUT the shuffle is really too small for her and while we have um, THREE iPod-hand-me-downs to choose from, I think my mother can have something better than another hand-me-down tech item or even a won shuffle, for that matter. (Holy run-on sentence, Batman!)

Sidenote the second: There are no Halloween photos of the boy this year.  I know, I know.  The problem is that this was the year he GOT it.  He was so excited to even think about getting the candy and wearing his costume that I could not hold him still for a photo.  We had to do everything NOW and there was no time for “Mama wants a photo.” (Alternatively, I suck as photo-documenting my son’s life — I prefer the former, k?)

Now for the story, finally…

Duke stayed awake this year.  He could not hold his little self back any longer begging to put his costume on at 6pm and asking if we were getting in the car.  I said, ‘Buddy, we are going to take a walk with your bucket and see the neighbors.” “Huh?”  Let’s get your costume on and I’ll show you.

So, Duke the Monkey and Mama in her hat (no glasses) set off to beg the neighbors for candy.  We go to our next door neighbor’s house first.  I tell Duke, “Ok, what you do is ring the doorbell ONCE, when they open the door, you say ‘Trick or Treat” and they give you candy and you say, ‘Thank You’.”  See, I’m teaching the boy manners, right.

First house, Ring Doorbell 9 times; door opens; Duke stands there in silence; prompted says “treat” gets candy (got to pick — TWO rice crispy treats) and says ‘thank you’ — I told the neighbor this was his first house EVER and she was thrilled and offered MORE candy.  Duke was off down the driveway, so no thank you.

Second house, ring doorbell a few times, door opens, “you got candy?” – older lady wanted to talk to him — he took candy said ‘thank you’ and was off again.

(I promise I’m not going through all the houses)

After a few tries, he got the ‘trick or treat’ part better, but it was always followed by his rather cute, “you got candy?”  He only tried to go into two or three houses, but we knew those folks, so it was more ok.  We stopped by both of his sitters’ houses and the little boy his age across the street who wasn’t going until later (that boy was at our house after 8pm!!)

In total, we begged at about 8 houses.  He didn’t get much of a loot — because we didn’t hit many houses — because it seems pointless when I’m not going to let him EAT all that candy.  He did ‘trick or treat’ Daddy — which was fun — for us, mostly because we also had Direct TV at the house all of during this.

And proof that I’m not a horrible mother, I allowed him to pick ONE candy he could eat before dinner.  But the best part was when I emptied his bucket to inspect the candy, Duke’s eyes were like saucers and he says, “Daddy, we went to ALL the houses and got ALL the candy.”

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 1st, 2007 at 8:14 am and is filed under This Child of Mine. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.