Halloween 2012

Why isn’t Halloween on a Friday every year? Wednesday just doesn’t work for a mom with 4 young kids. Halloween comes and goes so fast when the holiday is in the middle of the week. It’s like a mad dash of carving pumpkins, school party preparations, bringing and wearing costumes to school and after school activities, then toss Dan’s birthday into the mix, etc. I’m exhausted. I was secretly excited when November 1 arrived.

This year, Gabby and Giuliana both chose to be Batgirl and Rocco wanted to be a samurai (I think his decision was somewhat based on the fancy sword pictured with this costume). Marco was a monkey by default… I didn’t think much about his costume and threw the monkey on him as we were rushing out the door to trick or treat in town. I WISH I would have thought more about his costume, because then I would have remembered to put him in one of the twins bat costumes that they wore on their first Halloween. Bummer!!

Since Halloween was Wednesday night, and Dan’s birthday was Tuesday (along w/Rocco’s gymnastics), we decided to carve pumpkins on Monday night. And, since the rain decided to arrive a week into October (after 90 days of no rain)… Dan & I never took the kids to a pumpkin patch this year.

Pumpkin carving is a somewhat exhausting experience for a parent of 4 young, enthusiastic kids. Luckily, we have had the help of our au pairs the past few years. Gabby really loves carving pumpkins. She pulled out all the seeds and pumpkin guts herself this year. Love! I helped her just a tiny bit at the end. She also really enjoyed choosing what her pumpkin should be carved as. Giuliana also seemed to get in the spirit of pumpkin carving this year. It was probably a combination of her own excitement and energy, fueled by the excitement of her older siblings (and her wanting to do whatever they do; be just like them, etc). She used a spoon to whole-heartedly attempt scooping out pumpkin guts. However, at age 2, it was all about the interest and intent, and not much productivity. It was super cute. After she was done trying and playing, I scraped the insides out and let her pull as much of the guts out as she wanted (which wasn’t much). But, she had a grand time! Rocco was a big talker, but when it came time to clean his pumpkin out—he was not a fan. He didn’t like getting the pumpkin guts on his hands. He’d try to pull stuff out with the spoon, but didn’t quite get the concept of scraping the pumpkin walls first… so he just got frustrated and decided to enlist his mother to do the job. He also chose how his pumpkin should be carved and I had to stop him several times from trying to carve the pumpkin on his own.

We ended up carving a B.atman logo, a one-eyed pumpkin, a P.eace sign, a moon/star pumpkin (to represent Matteo), and a silly face.

 

This year, we also decided to make and decorate some caramel apples. Fun activity that lasts all of 7 minutes. MUCH more time put into melting the caramel, cleaning the pan, and cleaning all the sprinkles from the counter and floor. Now that activity is checked off the list - not sure we need to repeat it! ha!

 

On Halloween, both Rocco & Gabby had Halloween parties and costume parades at school. Then, we took them trick-or-treating through town where all the local businesses were handing out treats to the kids. I LOVE this... the kids fill up their treat bags. It's very social becuase it's from 3-6, so it's not yet dark and tons of families are participating so we see lots of school friends. And... the kids get somewhat worn out from this and don't yet feel the need to do much night trick-or- Yes... even at age 6 & 4, the concept of "work a little harder, get more reward" can be taught! ;)