Trick or Treat
Last night we took Margaret out for her first trick or treating. Overall she's a happy and social girl, but when new people are around, particularly men, it may take her 15 min or so to warm up to them. Since trick or treating is almost 100% about new, often costumed, sometimes scary people, we really didn't know what to expect.
The plan was to go trick or treating with our neighbors Tommy and Stephanie. We got a little impatient waiting on them to get home from their anniversary dinner, so we went ahead and dressed Margaret up in her bumble bee outfit and did a trial run at our other neighbor's house. We handed her her bucket, and, and waited behind some other kids as the Diemund's handed out candy. Margaret just kinda stood there, unsure of what was going on. As the candy went into her bucket, she saw McKennah, and tried to walk in their house. We had to grab her and explain to her that we'd be going to other houses, and that we weren't going to be staying to play. We went to one other house while waiting on Tommy and Stephanie. This time Margaret seemed to know the drill. She cooperatively carried her bucket to the door, and held it out to receive candy. She wasn't the least bit timid or shy, much to our pleasure.
Tommy and Stephanie showed up while this was going on, and we waited a few minutes for them to get their kids suited up. We trick or treated our whole neighborhood with them, and Margaret was just amazingly awesome. She never fussed at all. When it was time to go to a new house, she'd grab her bucket and head to the door. If she was the first one there, she'd even knock. If she was behind bigger kids, she'd just sidle back and forth looking for a gap so she could get up to the front and get some candy. Never once did she act afraid or timid of anyone. She continued to try to go into people's houses, particularly if they had dogs.
When we got home, we dumped her candy on the floor and she spent a solid 15 minutes just picking up each piece and inspecting it. She played a matching game for a little while where she'd find 2 of the same kinds of candy, and hand them to me. We let her have a few things, trying to limit the sugar as much as possible. A big thanks to the folks who gave out pretzels!
The best part about it all is what happened this morning. I woke up, and laid in bed for a while. Margaret must have woken up w/o me noticing, apparently still thinking about last night, because the first words I hear out of her mouth, at full volume, are "Trick or Treat"