Natalie & Ryan: Halloween on Sesame Street

I sure do love any excuse to dress up Lilly. So, you can imagine, we had a fun Halloween. I wracked my brain for weeks, trying to decide what to dress her as. Last year she was an Ewok, and Ryan and I were Han Solo and Leia. Well, I decided that since this was probably the last year that we could get away with dressing her as something that we wanted, instead of letting her pick, that I better do something she probably won't want to do next year. And I wanted something that would be easy for Ryan and I to match.

Can you guess what I picked? ELMO!! I had no idea that this choice held the potential for traumatizing Lilly. When her costume arrived, I decided to put it on her, just to make sure it fit. The second I started putting it on her, she started to scream and cry. It occurred to me, that from the eyes of a baby, it may appear as if I killed Elmo, skinned him, and was now stuffing her into his empty shell of a body. She was mortified. When she looked at me, I could tell that she honestly feared that I had injured Elmo in some way. I felt so bad! For the next couple of weeks, every so often, we would force her into the costume, to try and get her used to it. Each time promised the same panic. Only recently did we discover that the trick to calming her down was to give her her stuffed Elmo, to show her that he was okay. It worked like a charm! This morning, however, giving her Elmo wasn't enough. I had to pull out the "Elmo Facetime" app, so she could actually talk to Elmo. Basically it's an app that allows kids to Facetime with Elmo, and once Lilly could see that Elmo was breathing and talking, she calmed right down. Haha! If only I had known. And a small addition to the costume that few will get, was a gold fish Beany Baby...."Elmo loves his gold fish, his crayon, too!" (Only true Elmo fans will have that stupid song stuck in their head now)

When Erin dropped Joel off this morning, I about died. She dressed him as Superman...complete with marker glasses. Oh, and did I mention how freaking cute he was?! When I went to get him up from his nap, I noticed he managed to smear the marker all over his face, mostly around his mouth. He looked like he was sporting a 5 o'clock shadow. The poor guy was covered in marker! Ryan took the day off from work, and boy was I relieved that I would have him to help with my Halloween plans....and to be the Grouch to my Cookie Monster. We didn't really dress up, per se, but we wore Sesame Street shirts. Ryan was Oscar the Grouch, since, well, ya know. And I was Cookie Monster, since it's obvious I have a bit of a problem with eating too many cookies.

We packed up the kids and first stopped by my mom's work for some cubicle trick-or-treating. Lilly got her first experience with creepy-crawlies. Apparently one of my mom's co-workers knows a guy who knows a guy who has a small "reptile encounter" business, so he visited. He brought along several pythons, small snakes, HUGE cockroaches, a tarantula, and scorpions. I surprised myself when I asked to hold the tarantula. I'm deathly afraid of spiders, like pee-my-pants, run-out-the-door-screaming kind of scared, but tarantulas don't bother me at all. Getting Lilly to pet the snake was a bit of a challenge. She eventually just poked it and called it good. Then, out of nowhere, the woman holding the scorpion just kind of threw it on Lilly, thinking it would be funny, when, in reality, it upset Lilly, causing her to yell "NO!" and pull back. We about had a scorpion on the loose when it went flying. It was pretty funny to see all the adults panic and yell "GAH! NO!!" as it fell to the floor.

We stayed long enough to stuff Lilly with potluck goodies, mainly my mom's homemade mac & cheese, and then we headed up North to visit Kevin and Jan. We stopped off at Jan's work to say hi, and then we stopped off at the house to visit Kevin. It was fun to see their faces when Lilly-Elmo went running up to them, begging to be picked up. She sure did make the cutest Elmo around....Another long car ride, and a quick nap for Lilly later, we embarked on our first trick-or-treating adventure. Lilly loves to go on walks, loves it when people give her stuff, and loves getting to put stuff in her basket. What could be more perfect?

She came running into the bathroom first thing this morning, and immediately pointed at my shirt and said "COOKIE!"

I made sure I gave him the iconic Superman curl

I laughed literally every single time I looked at him

She looks a little dubious

Dare I say that I actually enjoyed holding it? He was very soft

She found a Smartie candy on the floor and tried to feed it to him

Right before she decided to force the scorpion on Lilly

She loved all the giant spider decorations

Sitting in the chair like a big girl, feeding herself mac & cheese. It really doesn't get much cuter than that.

She ate so much, she just plopped down and leaned against the cabinets. Everyone was joking that there was more than just water in her bottle.

She made grandpa give Elmo kisses

This looks like an ad for the packaging of the Elmo costume

Lilly's Dorthy accessory

The most surprising part of trick-or-treating was that Lilly wore AND kept on mittens. She's never worn them before, and I was positive she'd pull them off.