Luke wanted to carve a pumpkin on October 1st. He's been so excited about the holiday, and seeing them outside the grocery stores only fuelled it more. Unfortunately, carved pumpkins start to spoil about four days after they are carved, so he had to wait. He did get out the plastic lighted ones that we have and put one in his room, one in Tim's room, and one in Paul's office. It's a lot of fun to watch him enjoy the holiday.
When it came time to carve, he was very keen to use the knife. He doesn't have enough strength in his hand yet, but he kept his hand on the hilt while I did all the pushing and pulling. Both of them designed their own faces. Timothy's did not have a nose. Instead he wanted to leave the knife buried in the face where the nose would go. That was fine with us, but apparently Luke found this unacceptable because a nose appeared two days after it was carved. The pumpkin had softened enough for him to do the carving himself. I shutter to think what could have happened if the dog had jumped up when he was holding the knife or... Anyway, Timothy was not pleased with the nose. We did a little 'skin graft' from the back of Luke's pumpkin to fill in the nose, and Tim in his long-suffering way, accepted this fix.
This Halloween, Luke chose his own costume. When I asked him in early October what he wanted to be for Halloween, he answered without hesitation "Angry Bird." This is significant because it's the first year that he has understood enough about the holiday to make such a decision AND his ability to think about the future and imagine himself doing things and then expressing this in language is new.
Timothy came up with his costume on his own, and we helped him bring it to life. In case you can't tell, he's a box. He's actually two boxes stacked on top of each other. He cut out the eye and arm holes and attached tape handles to the flaps on the inside so that he could shut it all up. His idea was to shut all the slots and crouch down, so that he would just look like a box sitting there. Then he could speak or move and scare unsuspecting people. It worked on GG. So that he didn't have to hold the box, we glued cardboard flaps inside, then attached suspenders to them. This way, the weight of the box rested on his shoulders. When he told us that he wanted to be a box, our reaction was the same as yours probably was when you read or heard that he wanted to be a box. A box? His friends, however, thought it was the coolest idea ever. It was all the talk at school.
I went out for drinks with a group of mothers and one of them told us about how her son was complaining that Tim was going to have the best costume. His mom finally told him that she was sorry that she wasn't as talented as Tim's mother to help him make such a cool costume, and he was going to have to be happy with a store bought costume. He settled on being a bush (camouflage ghillie suit). Another mom said her daughter came home and told her how Tim was so good at thinking outside the box that he became the box!
This year, I was the chairperson for Fun Fest at Tim's school. It's a night of costumes, games like bingo and cake walk, and junk food. About 200 people attend. It was a lot of work, but people seemed to really enjoy it. I had to be there from long before it started until it was all cleaned up after it was over, so Paul brought the boys for about an hour. I helped last year as well, and we came just as guests two years ago. Luke remembered everything, especially the Angry Birds game. A couple of fathers made catapults that launch stuffed angry birds at boxes with bad piggy faces stuck to them. He also liked the putt putt and the bowling. He even busted out some impressive moves in the disco room. Timothy spent the whole evening with his friends, being older and liking the status of it. He wore the box for most of the night. When Luke was ready to go, Tim decided to stay with me. He was very helpful during clean up, directing the high school volunteer to place furniture and such.
Maybe I'll do it again next year. It's so nice to be able to be this involved in the activities of the boys even if it is exhausting.
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