Thankful for burning the biscuits

Last year we had an awesome Thanksgiving because my whole entire family came and it was a great big party. Well, my infamous cooking is probably to blame, but this year J and I were on our own. Because we are planning a huge trip to see everyone (ha, you think you can escape us by not coming for Thanksgiving?! We will gladly bring GERD-baby to you) in December, we decided it was just as well that we chill a little for this holiday. Especially because J is in the thick of studying for boards. And also we have been too sleep deprived to keep up with our social calendar this week already.
So we decided to keep everything low key. But then I overheard J say to friend on the phone, "I dunno, probably we'll have some leftover chili or something". And it just sounded wrong. So Little One and I went on a mission to Save Thanksgiving! I'm thinking They might make a Hollywood children's special out of it for next year.
I went to the store to gather supplies for Operation Tofurkey, and I promise I did not go to all the ones that were closed just because it was my first time out without Little One. Actually I kind of missed her. Several grocery stores jam-packed with panicked patrons who had waited until the last minute and were frantically beseeching employees as to whether they might have every foodstuff known to man in a can, I came home with some items. Which were obviously "special for the holiday" as advertised, or surely they would not have cost so much more than they do the rest of the year.
I came home and Little One and I got cookin. Because Little One wanted so badly to help that she got quite upset when not participating in the action, we made a lot of the dishes together, and so I am now happy to report that I've got a pretty good act worked out should Little One and I ever need to run away and join the circus!
This turned out to be a good thing. As I mentioned earlier, my cooking skills are infamous. The thing is that the level of anxiety I have over making a good meal is inversely proportional to the edibility of said meal.
For example, one of the few things I can reliably make that turns out pretty well is my mom's apple pie. It's pretty tasty, if I do say so. Which is why I decided, when J and I were dating, to make one for his family. Well, take into account the fact that it was the first thing I had cooked for these people, and the fact that J's mom makes Martha Stewart look like a third-rate fry cook, I was nervous as heck about getting that pie to be my Best Ever. So naturally, it turned out more like apple soup with some crusty little globs of dough floating about the top like sad little glaciers.
J has inherited some chef talent from his mom (not that I will EVER complain about that. I consider it to be one of the greater bonus points awarded to me by the cosmos). Plus he is also J. Which means he's all cute and awesome and everything, and I want to impress him so I can trick him into being my boyfriend. Which means, obviously, that everything I make for him is horrid. Even toast. Seriously.
So dinner could have been a true fiasco, but Little One saved the day, I think, by completely distracting me from how much I wanted J to like it. Thanks Little One! I think everything turned out not to be a hazard to anyone's teeth or general health! And then the best part is, we all sat down, my little family, for the first time, and had Thanksgiving dinner together.Now. Thanksgiving, like any holiday really, is kind of arbitrary. It's just another day, that someone gave a fancy name to, giving us a reason to overspend, overeat, overextend. But I'm glad that we decided to go ahead and celebrate. Because holidays are also a reminder to pause in our busy lives, change perspectives a minute and focus on things that do matter. Especially today.
Thinking about everything I have to be thankful for this year is just completely overwhelming. It always is, of course, because I have been pretty lucky from the get go having been born into a family that loves me, and not having lost any limbs trying to cook or anything like that.
But this year...whoa. Of course, Little One sort of tops the chart just by existing in our lives. But She also makes me so much more grateful for things I usually take for granted.
I find myself thinking things like, "Thank goodness for the excellent health care we have. Thank goodness for the maintenence of these roads and the invention of car seats. Thank heavens for central heating, for smoke alarms, for having two strong legs to do the Living Room Marathon with".
I can't help thinking today about so many moms I've known, and the millions more I'll never meet, who don't have those things. I think about the kids who don't have warm homes, enough food, or families to love them. Who don't have safe lives or certain futures and who are thankful anyways. It makes me ache for all the mothers who's babies are in danger, and all the little ones out there who don't have Enough. But it also makes me that much more intensely aware and grateful of all I have.
We’re all healthy. We have our home, our families, each other. We live in a place and time where we don’t have to fear for our safety or future. Where I can tell Little One that she can be anything she wants when she grows up- and the opportunity for that is real. Today I am so thankful for so many things. But most of all, I'm thankful my life is such that I lived a whole day, and my biggest worry was burning the biscuits. That's really something.

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you- I'm thankful for you, too. :)

It's a Thanksgiving MIRacle!

So I want to do a Thanksgiving post when I can, but I just have to take a minute to mark down this glorious moment in history. Last night. Last night, we put Little One to bed at her usual 10pm. After a string of the worst nights of the GERDish era- a time we shall ever refer to as "The Great Cry"- we were not at all surprised when She woke back up screaming at 10:20.
But, BUT: I gave Her a cuddle, put her back down- at 10:30, sans pacifier mind you-and She slept until (*drumroll...drumroll...cymbals crashing...drumroll...*) FOUR thirty am! Four THIRTY!
And, AND: that's not all. At 4:30 I fed her, put her back down-no pacifier, none whatsoever, and She slept until 6!
That is a total of over SEVEN hours of sleep my friend! Uh huh. I wish I had video on this thing. Because then I could show you how I have taken all this extra energy I got from sleeping so much and blown it all in one place on my fantasticaly spectacular Happy Dance. I might even, no I think I will, raise the roof a little bit.
Talk about something to be thankful for. :)

Scientific conclusion:

No Dice.

The Experiment

As I type, I am conducting an experiment. And Little One is my subject. Here is why.
We've been hanging in there pretty ok the last week or so, and I hate to risk jinxing myself (again) but I think that we may have reached the apex of the GERDishness and are beginning a slow, halting, but progressive decrescendo.
She still gets fussy around 6pm, but doesn't really gather steam until around 8. The best part is we've been pretty well able to get her to be asleep in her cradle at 10, so that's only really 2 hours of Little One's operetics, so that's not so bad. (She may only sleep 20 minutes, but at least the crying stops then)
Even better, we thought, was that with the help of my new friend the Pacifier (that's a whole other post) the last few days we've even been able to get away with not much actual screaming at all. We still do the Living Room Marathon. We still turn her this way and that way, like a little rotisserie, trying to help her get comfier, and we do enlist the Pacifier's services pretty heavily in those 2 hours, but the volume level is blessedly low. I mean, in comparrison.
Last night, in fact, she slept practically through the whole thing. We thought we'd put one over on Little One. We sat there on the couch, J and I, looking at her closed little eyes and, especially, at her closed little mouth, and said, "hee hee!" and just thought that we were really getting away with something. Something even better than when we tricked the dogs into thinking ice was a treat so we could save a small fortune in milk bones. We thought we'd won ourselves a night of freedom!
Sadly, no.
Little One does not shirk her responsibilities. She woke up right around bedtime to find herself being put into pajamas. She knew that this could mean only one thing- she had totally missed an appointment. Slept right through her nightly obligations! So, being responsible and not wanting to skip out on her duties, she promptly made up for lost time. She made up for it all. night. long. ALL night long.
So, tonight, which has turned out to be another miracle night in which she seemed not to be in much discomfort and therefore not shrieking, I decided to do an experiment. Starting about 7pm, Little One and I had some special "mommy and me" time. We played games, read books, sang songs. We listened to music, did some tummy time, made faces at each other. Anything to STAY AWAKE.
Then, about a half hour before usual bedtime, when she had really just about had it, I plopped her in the cradle. SO. The hypothesis is that she will be so tired that she will NOT stay up crying all night, and that she will even maybe sleep for several hours *in a row*.
What do you think? Any predictions? Will it work? Am I a scientific genious, or just a really really, really mean mom? I probably know what Little One would pick. But she lost her vote last night, somewhere around 3am.

Surprise reinforcement

The other day my dad happened to be in the general vicinity on a business trip. He called to say that he had just a few hours to spare in the evening, and would we mind if he swung by to visit Little One?
...Hmm. Would we?
Would we mind having someone with lots of baby experience, all giddy to hold and coddle Little One, walk in the door like the reincarnation of some martyred saint right at the exact time of night She is set to commence screaming like a banshee?
Would we mind having a grandparent, of all things, coming here and getting all up in our business right as the gun is about to be fired for the kickoff of the nightly Little One Marathon around and around and around and around and around the living room? Right in time for the feeding after which she is most likely to erupt into an emetic Mt. Vesuvius???
Well gosh. I suppose we wouldn't mind, not too terribly, no.
So he came over and we threw Little One at him like a grenade with the pin pulled and then we sat down and had some tea while Little One and her grandpa had some "bonding time". He got paid pretty well in cuddles, but I think it's fair to say he earned them. And I think it's fair to say that none of us, including Little One, minded too much.

Visiting Miss M

Last weekend Little One and I had the honor of visiting Miss M. M is the sweet little girl I looked after before Little One came along, and I have been missing her lots, so we went to introduce two of my fave girls to each other.
M, by the way, is possibly an alien, or one of those AI machines, or maybe just a freak of nature. The child is preternaturally angelic. No, really. She has always slept through the night, eaten veggies, and shared her toys. She is like one big walking pile of sugar, which is why, when M's parent's said "oh, remember how hard things were when M was a baby?" it made me giggle and giggle. That's like saying, "gosh, remember how poor I was back when I only had one billion dollars?"
We had lots of fun on our visit, and M was very sweet patting the baby very carefully, pointing out her elbows and ears, and helping me give her a bottle. Plus we had a tea party.
I would love to show you how, incredibly, M is as cute as she is sweet, but despite my assertions in the previous post I do know M's parents well enough to know that they would almost definitely call out Scotland Yard and take up some pitchforks if I really put their baby girl up on the internet for all the crazies to see. No offense. So I have discreetly edited and left out any pics with defining characteristics visible.
Still, even though you can't see M's cute face, you can probably tell that we had fun. Until, of course, the evening came and Little One's screaming time arrived, at which point we made a hasty escape, because screaming infants in the car are way better than screaming infants in other people's houses.
Though I confess I was tempted, just a little, to stay awhile and let them witness the awesome terror that is the GERD-baby. Just to help M out, you know, get her some of the credit she deserves by having never in her life cried for more than 12 minutes (this is an actual record, by the way). However, as much as I love M, I like her parents too, so it seemed untoward torture them.
Besides, it wouldn't really be fair to Little One. GERD-baby mode is really not at all her fault, and it leaves an unfair impression. Underneath all the screaming and writhing, she's a pile of sugar too. See?

Meet the Fan Club

On a happy note, I decided to post some pics of Little One with some of the folks who I have generously shared bits of Little One fun so far. I didn't do it earlier because I thought to myself, hmm. Maybe everyone wouldn't fully appreciate being plastered up on the World Wide Web without permission.
So I was going to wait until I had asked everyone, but then I thought, you know what? Does that weird metrosexual guy that hooked up with Britney Spears get asked for his permission before his over-gelled hair gets printed in Star magazine? Does that waitress who married Nick Cage get asked? Or that chick that runs around in Bikinis all the time with Lindsay Lohan? NO!
When you hang around with superstars, you have to get used to the paparazzi. So if you have a problem with my unlicensed use of your image, feel free to let me or my People know. We'll see what we can do. But, really, if you want to roll with Little One, you gotta get used to the publicity.

Go Vegan!

If you follow this blog you may have noticed a steady progression, an escalation, shall we say, in Little One's sad faces over time- from happy face to were-baby to colic-baby, to now. Poor little Little One. "Now" means GERD baby. What is the difference between colic-baby and GERD-baby you ask?
Well once I sat on a plane with this woman who told me all about her gall bladder. For THREE HOURS. And I vowed never to become That Lady. Besides which, I don't want to overwhelm you all with big fancy medical words like "esophageal". So I won't go into detail. We'll suffice it to say that it means that rather than general fussiness for unknown reasons, we have miserable screaming for a specific reason.
This reason makes it hurt when Little One swallows, which makes her cry. Those two things make it very hard for Little One to eat. So then she is very hungry, so she screams. Which makes it hurt even more to swallow, and we all play this fun little ring-around-the-rosy till we wear ourselves out. Yay!
As entertaining as this cycle can be, (and, woo hoo, let me tell ya, it can just capture all your attention for hours! Like a good book! Or a comedy show! Or Chinese water torture!) we have opted to attempt to break it. Just to, you know, change things up a little, try new things. Like this 'sleep' thing we hear so much about.
So to do that I get to make "moderate diet changes which may help to alleviate the problem". These "moderate changes" include the excision of the following products from my grocery list:
Eggs, Dairy, Soy, Peanuts. Which means that I am now a vegan. Probably PETA put Little One up to this, come to think of it.
Well even though this means I am mourning the loss of both ice cream and tofurky, Little One does not feel sorry for me. This is because for her part in the "kill the GERD" game plan, she has to take medicine. Little One thinks that this medicine is kind of like dancing on the bar when you're wasted; it's kinda fun once, but after that it's just distasteful.
Lest I sound all whiny and pouty, I will say that between bouts of misery Little One is still smiling and being a trooper, and we are all still having fun. Really! Not even the evil GERD can detract from Little One's adorableness, and besides there are some plus sides to this whole thing.
For example there are extra cuddles. And the hope that things will get better now that we've identified the problem. And the fact that J has taken it upon himself to make me special, fancy, non-soy-or-peanut-laced vegan breakfast, and to snuggle and entertain Little One so I can actually eat it. Which reminds me that, GERD or no, Little One and I are a couple of the luckiest girls on the whole earth.

Too cold to melt

Do you know that it is supposed to snow here this week? SNOW! That means that it is pretty chilly out here these days. Chilly enough to directly preceed freezing. Brrr. I think this weather may explain a strange phenomenon I've noticed around here. Around here meaning, a round here (I'm pointing to my...self).
When I got out of the hospital I was told by some well-meaning sweeties, "oh, don't worry honey, that baby weight will just melt right off!"
Hmmm....must be the weather.

Remembering not to forget

As you all know, yesterday was Vets day. This day is cool because lots of times you get off of work! But it's also really about something. J and I have step-dads and grandparents, aunts and uncles, and lots of friends who all have served or are still serving with the military, and obviously J rocks the Navy uniform himself. Now, I don't care what your political opinions or beliefs may be, I think that you have to respect and appreciate the sacrifices that have been made, and those that are implicit in the lives of those who serve. Those sacrifices are not small.
Even though Veterans Day will probably be something Little One gets psyched about as she grows up because she might get out of school, J and I want her to get the real reason the day is special, too. Yesterday we had the opportunity to begin that lesson straightaway, in a very moving way.
There are a couple of close family friends who were always there when I grew up, awesome people, and they met in Vietnam. She was his nurse when he was wounded, and he says he knew the minute he saw her that she was The One. They were married for 34 years, until she passed away just before J and I got married. She was my "aunt", and my school nurse, and took care of my sister and I in a lot of ways through the years.
Yesterday J and Little One and I had the honor of standing behind my 'uncle' as as my 'aunt' and other women vets were remembered in a ceremony at the Vietnam Women's Memorial. It was sobering to be there, with other families who have lost loved ones, but also uplifting to get to hear my 'uncle' share memories about her and the extraordinary way they met and built a life. It was a really special way to celebrate the day.
I know that she is far too little to remember (this is why we have pictures) but it meant a lot to me to have Little One there. Because this was a special friend and I want her to know about honoring those you love, but also because the memorial itself is so meaningful. You rarely hear about the women who serve and die in wars, but they have been there. You rarely see a memorial or hear a speech about the heroism of women in conflict, but there are many who are heroic.
I want Little One to understand that, to understand that the sacrifices these women made weren't only for Her country and for all of us, but in another way were also made to pave the way for Little One, and me, and all of us girls to be respected and valued in a way we have always been but not always recognized for; as fighters.

If you're a Vet, and I know some of you are, Thank You. If you're the family or friend of a Vet who knows that there are also sacrifices made by those who love and support those in uniform, Thank You too. And I'd like to throw out a special bit of love for my 'aunt', who spent a lifetime serving others, and continues to inspire.

An extra salute to my own amazing officer, too. I love you, J.

One month anniversary of Little One!

Having a baby is kind of like an arranged marriage. You suddenly get this stranger in your life who you have to live with 24-7, and even though you're going to love them forever, you don't really know a thing about them. Babies are kind of mysterious that way. I mean, sure, all babies are a lot alike. The crying, the pooping. Hey, that's humanity; we all have some things in common.
But at the same time, though she's still kind of larvae-like, Little One is, in fact, her own little person. Part of the fun of being a parent is to slowly figure out what kind of person we've ended up stuck with for the rest of our lives. It takes time, but J and I are supersleuths. We're determined to get to know Little One as quickly as possible, so we can learn all her tricks and try to formulate an antidote to them before she reaches teen years. And also because we can already tell she is pretty cool, and we totally want to make friends with her so we can sit at her table for lunch.

Little One turned a whole one month old three days ago. Happy Birthday Little One! That's a whole month of ice-breaker games and bonding activities we've now shared. We don't even have to wear name tags any more. Since you all probably want to know someone cool too, I thought I'd share what J and I have learned about our new little person.
Here is what we know so far:

Little One is a snuggle maniac. This girl looooooovees to cuddle. She loves it more than anything. She will actually use the same sad face with the trembling, pouty lower lip that she uses when she's hungry in order to fuss for a cuddle if she's feeling neglected. She doesn't mind the swing, and she actually likes the bounce-chair, but all of this drastically pales in comparison to being held.

Her fave cuddle is the tummy to tummy kind, with her head right up under your chin. She will go through all kinds of amazing contortions to get herself into this position, including squiggling up your torso like one of those naked kangaroo babies. Which brings me to...

Little One is STRONG. All those dance parties and jazzercise videos she was doing before she was born beefed this kid up. She can hold her head up by herself, and I have witnessed, several times, as she actually wriggled herself from her back onto her tummy. This is because she is also...

Determined. Little One knows what she wants and you can just see the ambition in her eyes when she tries to get it. Lie her against your bended knees when you sit down and she will literally hurl her head forward, giving her body enough momentum that she is able to fling herself at your chest, where she can squirm her way up to cuddle position. Put her in the cradle and if The Howl doesn't work, she will begin flailing about until she is pressed right up against the side of the cradle next to me. I'm pretty sure she's working on a way to bust through the slats next.

She is always figuring something out. Or seems to be. When she's awake, she is hyper alert. She looks all around with this serious, studious look on her face. She looks right at people's faces and seems to be sizing them up. She pretty much always seems to decide she likes everyone though, because she...

Smiles! Little One smiles a lot, and I've caught a few actual giggles, too. She can also play copy-cat. Meaning if I look at her and stick my tongue out a few times, she will start doing it too. Then she will make a whole litany of other silly faces in rapid succession. So she is also a ham.

She hates to be dirty. Messed diapers are instantly revolting. Spit up is completely intolerable. Baths, however, are pretty fun. Combing hair, not as fun. She likes to be sung to, also, which is too, too bad for J. Though the dogs seem to think it's interesting.

As of yesterday, she also batts at toys , and has discovered her hand. Oooohhhhhh. Hey look, all this may not sound impressive to you, but I think she's come a long way in a month. Which I'm pretty sure is what she's thinking about J and I, who are finally learning to fetch her what she wants (milk, diaper, spit cloth, snuggles) in under 30 seconds.

So far, I think the introductions are going well. We have a lot in common. I mean, I like snuggling too! True we've had our disagreements, mostly about what hours of the day should be used for sleeping, but we're working on a compromise. So far, overall, the kid seems to be funny, smart, sweet, did I mention cuddly?
I think we're going to get along. Yep, I think this will work right out. Guess we must have had a good matchmaker.

Baby's Day Out

Just prior to the full swing (have we reached the full swing yet? I sure hope so...) of the colicky-crying fun, we introduced Little One to her civic duty by dragging her along to the polls with us to vote. See, there we are.
Note that I have cleverly edited out the sign we were holding displaying our candidate of choice. This means "I did not proselytize politics to you, so lets all just get along, shall we?" The point is not who we voted for, per se, but rather that we did get out like good 'ol American citizens and vote. And also, that we got free Starbucks. That is an important point as well.We had so much fun voting and got so hopped up on caffeine (ok, mine was a hot chocolate, but hey I got a mad sugar rush) that we decided to make a day of it and go downtown to see this exhibit at the National Gallery that we've been looking forward to. It was awesome. It was also our first big day out with Little One. It went well. Well ok, we did have a little disaster with some copiously voluminous regurgitation and some untimely fussiness. Just mild fussiness; the type which might fly at Chuck-E-Cheeze, but is generally glared at through wire-rimmed glasses in art galleries. At one point, J said to me, "This is not working. Let's just go home", and I had to slap him in the face and say, "Damn it, man, pull yourself together!!"
That last bit might be a slight exaggeration, but the end result was the same. We soldiered on and had such a good time we went some other fun places downtown after that. So all in all, I'd say it was a sucess, and not just because I got hot chocolate. Though that would have made it worthwhile on it's own, obviously. The reason I bothered to post all this nonsense is strictly for posterity, to note that it was Little One's first:
Metro Ride
Trip to a Gallery
Trip to a Museum
Walk in the rain
Full day out and about
Direct pukeage hit to her father
All of which are very important milestones. Especially the last one. Plus that one was reeaaally funny.

Jinxed

There is a reason I haven't posted in a while.
Which is that in my last post I said something like, "oh, la-di-da, Little One practically never really cries, yay for me!" (something like that). And then, I did not knock on wood.
Well. At some future point when I less resemble a zombie who didn't get the memo that halloween is over, I will tell you all about the new joy in our lives that we like to call...COLIC. Yeah.
Until then, I will just post a few pictures and we can pretend that they constitute an update, k?
Here we go:

This is the colic-baby/dr.evil pose

From our first week home

"Ha ha! That Bee toy is quite the jokester!"

Waving Hi to her fans

Feigning innocence. The cuteness is sincere, though. :)

First little crack in my heart

Like any baby, Little One sometimes cries when she's hungry, or wet or dirty, or when she really feels she's suffered an intolerable lack of attention. Usually, though, she just sort of grumbles to get her point across, unless no one heeds the grumble, in which case she resorts to The Howl. Pretty rarely, though, does she really let go and cry.
Well last night I asked for it. You see, My Mother in Law bought Little One this really fabulous, beautiful cradle so that she could sleep near us for awhile. Little One is a fan. As long as it's daytime. But she gets seriously offended when she finds herself in there at night.
Little One's preference for sleeping is to be tummy to tummy with one of her parents. The cradle, you see, does not radiate heat. It is not soft and smooshy as, unfortunately, her mother is. It does not pat her on the back and say "shh shh" when she startles awake at night. Worst of all, she is positively forced to sleep on her back in there, which is just too insulting.
So I see where she's coming from. But, for so many reasons, she can't just sleep on people's tummies forever. So last night I declared to J, "We're getting serious about this cradle thing tonight. It's time to be tough". And he got the John Wayne glint in his eye and nodded in co-determination.
So we did the bedtime thing and we put her in the cradle. Just as anticipated, as soon as I put my head on the pillow- The Howl. So I picked her up and rocked her, and put her back in the cradle. Repeat. Repeat. Many grumbles and a few Howls later, she is SUPER sleepy, and she falls fast asleep. John Wayne and I give each other a little mental high-five, and we pass out also.
But, minutes later, she suddenly startles awake, finds herself not in contact with any tummies, and instantly starts crying. Really, really, all out, the-world-is-ending crying. So I scoop her up. I bring her in close and hold her tight. She snuggles her little bitty face up under my chin, and like a switch was flipped, falls right back asleep. She even looks like she's smiling a little. And I think, "wow". I didn't feed her, sing to her, hit her with a tranquilizer dart. She just needed to know I was There.
The thing is, in what seems like seconds, that will be gone. She won't want to be held so close, won't cry for me at night. Soon, my presence wont be enough to soothe her when she's upset. Looking at her peaceful little face in the middle of the night, I felt acutely aware of all that, and of how fast time seems to be moving these days. This will be the hardest thing about being a parent, I think. Loving someone so much, knowing that someday they're supposed to leave you. That the the days she wants to sleep on my tummy are finite, and few.
So I gave her a kiss and snuggled her a while, and just soaked it up. I admit it was pretty tempting to just forget the cradle. But. My job as her Mom is to pick her up when she cries, to comfort her and show her I'll always be here. But it's also my job to teach her how to sleep alone. It's a dichotomy I think every parent struggles with; how to protect and nurture and at the same time help her learn how to be independent. And I guess it starts already, at the very beginning really.
So I gave her one more cuddle and a kiss and I settled her back down in her cradle. And this time, she stayed asleep. I was relieved to get to take a nap, and proud of her for finally sleeping on her own for so long. But I'd be lying if I said that when I put her down and Let Go, it didn't break my heart, just a little.

BOO!

Ahhh, halloween. What parent wouldn't love this great American tradition. A holiday all about blood and gore, evil and death, monsters and the general paranormal, and of course copious amounts of sugar and condoned taking of candy from strangers. Fun for everyone! (I've had a super time explaining this holiday to some of my friends who are new to this country, let me tell you).
Well as good American citizens, we of course properly initiated Little One into the festivities. As you can see below, she got her own pumpkin (actually a gift from my Aunt W. Thanks Aunt W!) She did not get to trick or treat. I'm sorry but I usually am a bit suspicious of the motives of parents who's 'trick-or-treaters' do not yet have teeth. Just who am I to assume the free candy I'm dishing out is actually going to, hmm?
Besides which, it was cold out. But, thanks to a gift from our friend A (thanks friend A!) Little One did get to dress up. Which is good because otherwise I'm sure she would have felt left out. Now I'm a bit biased here, sure, but I think the costume was very fitting, don't you? The funnest thing about dressing up little one and trotting her to the door for candy giving was playing "guess the demographic if the group". The parent not dishing candy gets to guess, based on the reaction of the people at the door to Little One, what age and sex they are. Small shrill shouts of "baby!" mean toddlers. Lot's of questions ("Is that angel a baby?") mean elementary school. Random jokes ("sure she's an angel now, just wait two years!") mean dads. Pre-teen girls were a dead give away (outrageously loud chorus of "Aaawwwww!!!!"). No response whatsoever means boys older than 10.
Psht. Who says you can't have wild times any more when you have a baby! Ha. Little One partied with us all night long. We played this game, ate candy and pizza, and watched a moderately scary movie.
Rock. On.

We ate all the leftover candy, so instead you get pictures. Happy Halloween!

Our little pumpkins and our little punkin

Before the squirrels descended My little Angel

checking out some trick-or-treaters with Daddy
Halloween is exhausting!This last picture is very special to me. This is because I realize it may be the last halloween I see a sweet, sleeping face rather than a crazed child hopped up on chocolate. Got to appreciate these things while they last. :)