Halloween 2009

Ethan has been counting down the days to when he could go trick-or-treating. It's been really fun to watch how excited he is. He's been telling me since last fall that this year he wanted to be Super-Why off of a PBS show. After several failed attempts at making the costume I finally gave up and just bought one. Tragically no one really understood who he was. Oh, don't worry- he was happy to tell them that he was Super-Why and since he had the cape on they assumed he was some kind of super-hero so most asked him what special power he had. I had to laugh every time he excitedly declared "Super Why has the power to READ!!!" I think we thouroughly confused our neighbors but oh well, he loved it.
Isaac wore a dog costume that Ethan wore when he was 1 as well. It took some convincing though. He really wanted to wear Ethan's dragon-dinosaur costume from last year when he saw it in the box and kept shaking his head no as I was dressing him and pointing at the other costume and roaring. Tragically I'm still bigger than he is so I win and the other costume was too big anyway.
It's funny to see how different the boys are. The first year we took Ethan trick-or-treating, he declared he was done after just 20 minutes and then he never even ate any of the candy. He really didn't want it at all. He has since decided it's fun to collect the candy and dress up and he'll eat a few pieces but he's always very polite at people's doors saying "thank-you" and "Happy Halloween". Isaac is nothing like that. Taylor says he literally had to unclench Isaac's fists at every door to make him release the extra candy he grabbed (because of course 1 piece is never enough) and then he refused to say thank you or anything else besides "bye-bye". Oh well, it is just his first time.
And you can hopefully guess who's Bert. Apparently Taylor's company is big on dressing up. So we made a quick trip to the costume store and at least found him something he could take off if needed. He agreed to wear the costume trick-or-treating and all the kids loved it. Seriously, several started following him like he was the pied-piper or something. A little scary.

Our neighborhood does this thing for Halloween. They passed out flyers inviting everyone to a Halloween parade followed by a hot dog and chili dinner. We thought it sounded fun so we joined up with the group. Sadly, the parade is really just a large mass of people walking down a few streets to arrive at the party together. No one lining the streets. No one really "watching" the costumes. And it took a half hour to walk the route and by then Isaac was begging to be picked up and Ethan was very confused why we weren't stopping to get candy from anyone. So we skipped out on the party since our kids wouldn't have been happy and we tried to go trick-or-treating. But sadly, since this was a neighborhood party, most of the homes were empty and so the trick-or-treating was less than ideal. Our next door neighbors weren't anywhere to be seen and on Sunday they told Taylor they did the neighborhood thing for 2 years and now they just drive to another town and trick-or-treat there. We may be bailing on the neighborhood too next year.
I did go along for the parade thinking it would be a nice walk and the weather wasn't bad, but I wore out before the trick-or-treating and Miles never even made it. He slept the whole time in the bjorn. Oh well, he was a cute zebra at home. His costume even has a little detachable tail that I forgot to get a picture of. And he christened the outfit in true form- peeing on it so I had to change him out of it. I guess he wasn't really in love with it.