Halloween 2007 for Eirinn was kind of…non-existent.  She’s just too little to understand.  She doesn’t eat candy, so what possible motivation would she have to dress up in a hot, scary costume, walk to strangers houses, follow instructions, just to be given candy that a) she doesn’t like and b) mommy would steal anyway? 

We tried, though.  We tried everything.  She got crammed into her costume several times and only once did her face look like this:

All other attempts, her face was more contorted like you would see on a man being cattle prodded in the eye.  Painful and angry.  My mom and sister even tried fancying up her face with a Tigger nose and whiskers, but it was still a no-go.  A very, very firm no-go.  The costume fits up to 36 months, so we’ll try this whole thing again next year.

While Halloween 2007 was not so much Tigger-fied, she did mildly tolerate a raincoat with a duck head for a hood.  So, out of desperation to get at least one actual picture that was authentic and not Eirinn Photoshopped into a random Halloween scene, the plan was changed and she went out as a Duck.  Or a Girl Who Thinks It’s Raining Outside because the raincoat had a very important accessory - red dinosaur rubber boots, which are not very Duck-like.  Or maybe she was dressed up as Abbey because that’s who the coat belongs to and the novelty of the coat to Eirinn was that it was Abbey’s.  As in, ‘Tee hee, I’m stealing Abbey’s coat and Bugba let me!’  So perhaps her costume was Raincoat Thief.  You decide.

It didn’t really matter what she was dressed as because she only went to Anonymous Bubba and Papa’s house.  We figured the neighbours might look at this girl dressed in a regular old raincoat and think that it’s just a candy grab for mommy and daddy.  Which it would have been. 

Anonymous Husband took her to his parents’ house while I handed out candy to the neighbourhood kidlets and here is a list of things that made Eirinn cry while they were gone:

1. I wasn’t with her.  She’s a little bit of a Mama’s Girl lately, which rocks, but it made her cry that I wasn’t going, too.

2. She helped hand out some of the candy while there to kids who wear scary masks.  Scary masks are scary.

3. She bonked her head on the car door as she was getting out.  Legitimate reason to cry.  I’ll give her this one.

Halloween is not going to be her favourite holiday.

***

As a side note, this is our first year in our new house, so we didn’t really know what to expect for trick-or-treater traffic.  We bought enough candy for about 80 kids, including special fishy crackers for the little ones which were given the Eirinn Seal of Approval.  25 kids.  That’s all we got!  And you know what that means.  Anonymous Husband and I get to split about 35 kids worth of candy and Eirinn gets 20 packs of Ritz Scuba snacks!  Awesome. 

Halloween Candy Rule #1 - Buy only candy you’d eat.  However, buy some you love and some you don’t mind parting with.

Halloween Candy Rule #2 - Buy way too much.  Calculate how many kids you think you’ll get and multiply that number by at least 3.  Four if you got the candy on sale.

Halloween Candy Rule #3 - Only hand out candy from 6pm to 8pm, NO EXCEPTIONS.  Not even if there’s a two year old with their chubby little unicorn finger on the doorbell.  Sorry, Chubs.  Shop’s closed.

Picture this:

As I’m dropping Eirinn off at Bugba’s/daycare, I ask for my morning goodbye kiss.  Mama’s gotta go to work.  Surprisingly, this morning she doesn’t put up a fuss.  In fact, she comes running to me, lips puckered.  My heart leaps and I couldn’t be happier.  We make our mwah mwah mwah noise.

Now here’s where you should have taken my advice and gotten a bag.  Good luck to you if you thought I was joking.

Our lips touch and release in typical kissy fashion.  As I’m pulling away, life is now in slow motion.  I cross my eyes and look down.  What do I see but the one thing that is guaranteed to make me kvetch every time.  Gay-ron-teed.  A long, slimy, warm string of snot attached on one end to her nose and on the other?  My lips.  Snot.  Touching my lips.  I nearly fainted.  The only thing that stopped me from passing out right there on the floor was the overwhelming urge to hurl. 

It was snot.  On my lips.  And I could taste it.  I’m still queasy.

Eirinn has always had a lot of energy.  I don’t know where she gets it from because Anonymous Husband and I are one snore away from being permanently unconscious.  That is to say, we do not have a lot of energy.  But Eirinn does.  Even compared to other toddlers, she’s hyper.  She’ll run laps around furniture for hours, stopping only to hop, yell “MOMMY!  COLOUR!”, smack the dog lovingly, and then back to running. 

Some people use this just as an expression but with her, it’s true - I’m exhausted just watching her.  That’s because “watching her” involves keeping pace with her sprints, running defence for Bosco, catching flying toys before they crash into something ding-able.  And I’m not even going to describe to you how diapers get changed; I’ll pass out finding the words.  I nearly spontaneously combusted on Friday when my mom told me that she’s never changed a diaper while the baby or toddler was standing up.  What?!?!  Never?  She does daycare and has changed the diaper of literally dozens and dozens of children.  None of them have been standing?  Not only have I mastered the vertical diaper change, I’ve also perfected changing a diaper while Eirinn is running.  Yes, running.  That’s vertical + motion, people.  I certainly didn’t sign up for vertical + motion diaper changes when I was inking the whole parent deal, but I adapted and found a new skill I didn’t think I’d ever need to find.

The past couple of days have been exponentially worse.  Strike that.  I hate to say worse because I don’t necessarily think it’s a bad thing.  Yes, it’s exhausting.  Yes, it can be frustrating.  But how can I possibly be upset about her being…hmm…spirited?  I can’t see how I can.  Anyway, she has been extra…spirited…these past couple of days, which has conveniently coincided with a few days of me having less than normal energy.  We need to coordinate our schedules better because I am drained.  DRAINED.  Yesterday I napped while she napped and I still fell asleep on the couch at 9:30 with Transformers playing in the background. 

At 19 months, she is just at the Dawn of Toddler-dom, so I best get used to it.  I’m trying.  I’m realizing that sometimes it’s ok to have toys strewn from one end of the house to the other.  If I have to chase her all day to make sure that she is safe and happy, then the toys can wait until she goes to bed.  I also know that if I have to put on Dora so that I can sit for half a second, then Dora’s going on.  Maybe even two or three episodes in a row. 

There is a bonus for me out of all Eirinn’s portable chaos - she’s an excellent diet plan.  Not only do I not have time to sit and eat bonbons (which I would totally do if I could), it’s a 24 hour cardio workout like no other.