Although technically, this is Alice's third Halloween, it felt like her first. She knew she was going to wear her costume, and every day all week she asked if it was Halloween. Finally, today happened. At daycare, they taught the kids how to trick or treat, so she was well prepared. When I quizzed her, she already knew all the important parts: wear your costume, knock on the neighbors door, they open the door, you say trick or treat. She seemed a little unclear about what happened after that. She doesn't really know what candy is, and based on her chatter about birthday cakes, I finally figured out she was confusing candy with candles.
The mall that is a few minutes from our house was having trick-or-treating so we went there right at 6:00. It was as soulless and awful as I had imagined, but I hadn't prepared myself for the Christmas decorations. The incongruity was jarring. But Alice had fun seeing the other kids in costumes and she seemed to enjoy it. She didn't really know what they were putting in her bag, until we got to a place that was handing out popcorn. She ate that immediately. (Zac says she clearly takes after me in her tastes.) We spent about 45 minutes at the mall, then went back to our own neighborhood.
We weren't sure how Alice would do knocking on stranger's doors. She's been acting a lot more shy lately, so we thought it might be hopeless. But she surprised us both. She did great: She said trick or treat, she looked at the people, she usually said thank-you and responded to their questions. We just went to a handful of the closest houses, but discovered it was a great way to meet the neighbors (and peek inside their houses!).
Then we went back to our own house and let the trick-or-treaters come to us. Because it was getting late, we had missed most of them while we were out ourselves.
Meanwhile, Zac had Alice dump out her loot. She didn't really know what anything was. See her first taste of candy in the video below (it's a bit shaky because I couldn't stop laughing).
Later, in the bath, I asked her what she wanted to be next year and she said, "A lion. Roar!" She also talked about the bean seeds and I reminded her we didn't have any.
