Halloween arrived early this morning — about 2am. Jeffrey knocked at our door to tell us that he couldn’t sleep. He wasn’t feverish, didn’t have any need to throw up, and wasn’t aching, so the obvious diagnosis was Halloween Fever, to which the cure is a re-tucking in and instructions to go to sleep and if you can’t sleep, just read quietly. It worked.
But then while I was finishing breakfast at 6:25am, there was the pitter-patter of not-so-little footsteps — Jeffrey was up and ready to greet the day, almost an hour earlier than usual, and telling me Happy Halloween!. It looks like a bad case this year, I’m afraid, and it’ll be far worse by tonight.
He’s also convinced us to give away scary candy like Skull Pops and Eyes of Terror gum from Oriental Trading Company so that we’re in the spirit of the holiday — and just in case we run out of those, we have a bag of Snickers (how mundane).
It was a quiet evening, and we didn’t run out of candy; the first trick-or-treaters arrived at 6:05, and the last ones about two hours later. Jeffrey and I went out about 6:30, and we joined forces with one of his friends from school a few minutes (and several cellphone calls) later; they stayed together till the end of the evening.
Some of the houses were well-decorated for Halloween; most had at least a token decoration (we had a lighted pumpkin in the window). And Jeffrey came back with more candy than he’ll eat.
On the way home, Jeffrey said that it hadn’t felt like a year since last Halloween, but that October had felt like a very long month waiting for Halloween to arrive. Next Halloween is probably going to be very different — he’ll be in middle school, and probably not as innocent as he is this year.