A Mommy Story

Despite the cold and rain last week, the kids still insisted on going trick-or-treating on Halloween night. I’ve been getting over bronchitis, meaning walking outside in frigid, wet air probably wasn’t the best idea for me, so Aaron took the kids while I handed out candy with the dog.

Here’s what they looked like before they had to put on winter coats in order to go outside:

We had about half as many kids come to the door as we usually do. No wonder, considering the weather, but it meant long periods of waiting for the next group of kids. Cosmo stood watch patiently.

My three returned after only an hour, ready to call it a night. The candy haul was still impressive, though. Both kids had full pumpkins, which we immediately dumped on the floor and began sorting. In our house, we have two different sorts – first is the standard “look for anything slightly open or that could have been tampered with” sort that I think most people do.

But then we have to sort Cordy’s candy for anything containing artificial colors, since she’s unable to eat them.

I know it upsets her to take away over half of her candy. In previous years, this was much harder and involved some fairly hefty bribes to make her happy. As she’s grown, she’s started to understand just how bad she feels when she eats artificial dyes, and so she’s more willing to part with the loot. It also helps that a company called Unreal (no affiliation with them, I just like their candy) makes their own version of popular candies without the artificial dyes and junk. I bought a few large bags of their version of M&Ms right before Halloween so we’d be ready.

This year the offer of a new deck of Pokemon cards and the large bags of Unreal candy were accepted in trade for the candy she couldn’t keep. She still had about a third of her treats from going door-to-door, too.

Now it’s all over. The Halloween decorations have been put away (the pumpkins remain for now), the costumes have been moved to the dress-up toy bin, and we’re back to normal. (Well, aside from Ohio being the center of all things political at the moment.) It’s no wonder why November is so depressing for me – it’s that month between bright, happy, sparkly months.

And no, we won’t put up holiday decorations yet, even though they were being sold in stores before (!!!) Halloween. I’ll keep my less-fun November and let Thanksgiving have its day before I will put up any decorations. I’ll probably listen to Guns ‘N Roses “November Rain” a lot, too.