Benjamin Penguin

If by rousing success one does not measure it by amount of candy received (which was actually a fairly impressive accumulation of sweets) but rather by the fact that Benjamin seemed absolutely thrilled to be trick-or-treating in a doggie costume. And I do mean thrilled. I think he was as delighted as I was that evening.

The day was a good one – sunny but October chilly. I was eternally grateful for this, as Illinois has a tendency to be cold and rainy and generally blah on Halloween. We ran a few errands then took a good nap and suited up in costume. I wasn’t quite sure how he would respond to the costume. It was, after all, a dog costume with big floppy ears right by the face. But I think it is safe to say that Benjamin loved being dressed up. And I know this because, the day after Halloween, Benjamin brought Adam his costume and insisted that he be dressed in it and then further insisted that he be taken for a walk outside. He also brought me the costume last night for Halloween Evening Redux Part Three, but I didn’t have the energy in me to comply, so we played with trains instead. However, I think that my assumption that Benjamin likes this whole dressing up and walking around in costume thing is being increasingly supported by an ample amount of evidence.

But on Halloween Evening Part One, we had a blast. We had in mind that we would hit a few houses, see how Benjamin responded and take it from there. Well, Benjamin responded quite well. Right from the very first house, he held his little cloth BOO! candy bag and walked right up on the porch with me. I would knock on the door and crouch down next to him and say “Trick-or-Treat!” as Benjamin would stand there with his bag plotting entrance into the homeowner’s home. He was unmercifully curious regarding the interior of the houses and would often peer around the candy-giver to look inside their house. Now, this is where a parent might make a “tut, tut” sound and nod their head in bemused exasperation, but I was TOTALLY doing the same thing. I can’t help it. I just want to know how you live, dammit.

I like to collect in my memory the snippets of all the little things that Benjamin does that reminds me of me. I relish those moments where I can stop and say, “Now, that is Mama’s boy!” I think his sheer joy in getting dressed up in a costume and the general revelry that is holidays (and Halloween in particular) smacks of Mamaness. Adam enjoys the holidays as well, but the holidays change me in some small way every year. They make me feel excited to be alive, thankful for my family and friends, deeply nostalgic for my childhood and incredibly hopeful for the future. I hope that Ben’s young toddler version of enthusiasm this past Halloween  is the harbinger of a similar holiday glee. My mother is like this and I’ve had a real lifelong joy in being able to share this with her. It would be really great to be able to share this with my own child throughout his life.

But I digress, slightly. I think we hit up about 10 houses or so on Halloween and generally ambled about the neighborhood, taking in the sights of decorations and older children trick-or-treating. We all ate waaaaaay too much candy that night and spent the remainder of the evening watching not-too-scary Halloween videos until bedtime. It was a great day.

I’m kind of excited that this Halloween is on a Saturday and that the morning is sunny – although cold – thus far. Last Halloween, we didn’t do much. I walked around the block with Ben for a little bit with him in the stroller, but that’s it. I think Adam joined us. Since we weren’t going to be trick -or-treating anyways, we went out when it was late and just watched the older kids with their half-hearted attempts at costuming say their half-hearted “trick-or-treat” in a somewhat half-hearted attempt at getting free candy from neighbors. I did that one year, too. That whole asking for candy when one is a sophomore in high school and is really too old for this sort of thing. I mean, we were Theater Kids (c), so we were all theatrical and not at all half-hearted in our costuming and proclamations for candy and so I think people didn’t mind very much. But still, I felt a little nervous twang every time someone rang the doorbell because I was just waiting for the angry adult to call us out one of the times.

This Halloween, we’ll walk around with Ben a little bit and maybe even knock on a few doors. I may try to maneuver him into a little throng of children that are already making their way up to a house in the event that he just stands there or decides to take in a bit of the porch scenery or landscaping and ignores the whole candy retrieval process. That way, there will be other children there to retrieve candy so that the homeowner did not open their door in vain for our clearly uninterested little party. Also? Why do I care enough about hypothetical homeowner irritation to have thought this through so fully?

We are going to all be Dog Whisperer for Halloween. Ben is going to be dressed as the little naughty dog. I was planning to be dressed as Cesar Milan and Adam was going to be dressed as the hapless pet owner, but I think Adam wants to fight me for the right to wear Cesar’s awesome grey wig and fake mustache/goatee. So we’ll see how it all shakes out this evening. I’m so invested in getting Scrooge McHalloween to wear anything that resembles a costume that I’ll happily turn over the wig and facial accoutrements and wear the dogfoot printed t-shirt if that means the ensemble will be complete.

We also carved our pumpkin last night and did an excellent job, if I do say so myself.

Pictures to follow tomorrow!