Halloween

This is, for Jamie in particular, a glorious time of the year. First Halloween, then his birthday, then Christmas. He has said multiple times lately that he loves his birthday date because Christmas comes so soon after. Even if it is unspoken there is some suggestion in there that Connor is unlucky to have his birthday almost as far away from Christmas as possible.

But both boys clearly enjoyed Halloween, as you can see. Jamie's costume is that of a clone trooper. He had settled on this over the summer and stuck with it admirably over the intervening months. There was some concern on his part because of his awareness of the relation of clone troopers (good) and storm troopers (bad). He is deeply invested in being on the good side of the Star Wars good/evil dichotomy and this seemed something of a grey area, but he worked it out.

I would hasten to point out that the picture of Connor sleeping was actually on the way home from a Halloween party well before trick-or-treating even began. We were very excited to experience Halloween in our new neighborhood and it was a nice scene, though not nearly as crazy as Carolyn and Chris's street. We went around a couple of blocks near the house with a boy from down the street and one of Jamie's other friends. The big boys got into the act very quickly dashing from door-to-door, giving a good trick-or-treat, grabbing as much as they were allowed, then offering a perfunctory thank-you over their shoulders as they dashed off for the next score. Connor, of course, trailed along behind, monkey ears and tail bouncing along with his short, quick steps. At one point he was far enough behind that as he was going up the walk to the door, the owner, not seeing him began closing the door and it shut more or less in his face. He began sobbing of course, and the woman quickly opened the door and put things right. They all also learned that some places allowed them to take 2 or even 3 things from the bowl and would happily proclaim this. This led to a dejected Connor shuffling down the walk from a house of greater moderation saying, "I only got one!"

I think that some of Jamie's rush, aside from the sheer desire for more stuff, stemmed from the fact that he sensed that somehow the normal rules had been lifted. These would normally disallow a) knocking on random people's doors b) taking candy from said random people and c) eating more than one piece of said candy in any 24-hour period. When we got back to the house, he and his friend seemed to want to eat as much as possible before we regained our senses and the normal, draconian, rules were put back in place. This hasn't quite fully happened yet, I'm afraid.