I Think I'm Ready for Halloween to be Over...

And here's why. Our week began, you may remember, with my perhaps ill-conceived, or poorly executed, but still pretty fun Halloween party last week. You can read more about this brave? foolish? undertaking here:. Tonight, as I write this, it's one week later, and we have participated in six separate Halloween related events since the party (and not including the party!). I am tired. But if you have any energy left from your own holiday labors, please, keep reading.

The day before our Halloween party we went to O'Reilly's Summer Farm to get our pumpkins. The visit was stop #1 on a crazed, five stop outing with the kids. We had about 40 minutes to get the pumpkins before we traveled to Jacob's flag football practice, during which Casey and I did some drive-by shopping at Gap Kids. After our shopping spree we took a traffic-icky drive to IKEA to get some furniture for our upcoming guests (we can't wait, Nana/Papa!). After our trip to IKEA we sped back to Pittsburgh to get the kids to their 4:00 PM haircut appointment. Wow, I'm tired just recounting that day. And that was the day BEFORE our Halloween party!

In any case, we got some cute pictures at the pumpkin farm. We had wanted to go on a proper hay ride, to pick our pumpkins from the field. But with our truncated time frame the only ride Casey got was in the bottom of the shopping cart!


Jacob kept his humor up---and shows here that he's learned how to wink!


Here is what a real hay ride looks like.


Oh, well, as you are about to see, it's not like we gave Halloween short shrift this year!

Casey's Halloween Dance Class!

Over the summer Jacob participated in a summer school program at a near-by school called Carriage House. Jacob's gym was on the third floor, and Casey and I often trekked up the stairs to find him there at the end of the day. As we made our way to the gym we passed by a dance school called Dance Space 304, run by a lovely, older, European woman named Dena. Casey watched the girls in their pink tights and black leotards and started begging me to enroll her!

This fall I finally got around to enrolling Casey in her class, and so for the last three Mondays Casey, Jacob and I have been going to Dance Space 304 at 4:00 PM. Last Monday the kids were supposed to make a mask and bring it to class. I forgot all about this, until about 10 minutes before the dance class started! As a result, our mask was pretty basic!


At the end of class all the girls posed with their masks.


And, then, after that I asked Casey to do one of her dance positions for me. I think my favorite thing about dance class so far is the adorable pink and black leotards!

Carving Pumpkins!

By Monday night, after our mega-shopping trip on Saturday, the Steelers game on Sunday (during which we entertained 6 or 7 guests), the Halloween party on Sunday, and Casey's dance class earlier that day, I was exhausted. But Josh got a second wind and took over the hardest part of the always highly anticipated pumpkin carving, which is scraping out the insides of the pumpkin. Casey sat on the table and scooped out large clumps of pumpkin innards with her bare hands. She kept calling it "gloop." Which is exactly what it is! Jacob got really upset because he was trying to make his pumpkin look like the face of Ang, from Avatar. When he couldn't get it exactly right he let Josh help out a bit. But the design is definitely Jacob's!



Casey chose a small pumpkin that was exceedingly difficult to carve. For some reason this pumpkin's rind was like concrete!


Josh arranged the pumpkins on the front porch and lit them with candles.


Jacob's pumpkin is on the far left (the one with the arrow in his head), next is Josh's ghoulish grin; next is "C" for Casey, and finally there is my pumpkin, the die-hard Democrat Donkey. I just can't help getting political with my pumpkins!

Halloween Parade at Linden Elementary!

Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday were relatively quiet on the Halloween front. I did work a bit on my own costume (more on this later) but I didn't have to supervise anyone else's Halloween fun. Until Friday, when I arrived at the Linden Halloween parade just in time to help Jacob change into his costume.

The Linden Halloween parade is a time honored tradition, dating back quite a few years. Most of the Pittsburgh public schools do them, as far as I can tell from talking to me friends. Earlier this year, the Linden Halloween parade was canceled. Immediately, parents took action. I received this email about three weeks ago:

"I tried to speak with [the principal] today about the Halloween parade. She had someone else inform me that it was canceled. She said that the Board of Ed felt that it was not a constructive use of the students' time.

Someone has forgotten what it's like to be a kid! This has been a tradition at Linden since before we were kids. Please call the number above and/or email. They are working our kids quite hard these days and seem to have forgotten that the kids need to enjoy school in order to keep doing so well on the PSSA's."

In short order, the parade was back on.

For Jacob the parade was the cherry on top of a field trip to a pumpkin farm during which he got to go on an actual hay ride and play in a corn maze. When his class got back to Linden they started to get ready for the parade. The parade consists of each grade walking outside while parents and younger siblings look on proudly and take pictures.

Jacob's costume this year is pretty involved. It started out simple enough. I wanted to imitate the live-action costume worn by "Ang" in this summer's adaptation of the Nickelodeon series, Avatar: The Last Airbender. Here is the picture I used for my reference.


I found someone on Craiglist to sell me their son's karate gi for $10.00. Jacob and I dyed it yellow and brown. We also wanted ivory colored socks and arm sleeves, but we couldn't find any that were off-white, so we bought some white ones and dyed them. Then I bought some Burgandy colored ribbon to make the leg ties, arm ties, and belt, and we found some boys' slippers at Target that looked just like Ang's shoes.


The day of the Halloween party Jacob and I figured out that tying the leg ties and arm ties was going to be tricky. I thought if I just tied them tighter that they would stay up. WRONG! They fell down during the entire length of the parade.


Worse still, I forgot the face paint to make the blue arrow that Ang has on his forehead. At the last minute Jacob and I raided his art teacher's classroom and got some blue duct tape. It worked pretty well, though not great. Jacob was able to smile through his tears for this picture.


And here is his new good buddy, Connor, who was a super hero of some kind but I can't remember exactly which one.

Trick-or-Treating at the CMU Fraternities and Sororities!!

After the Linden parade Jacob and I headed over to Casey's school with her costume. About three months ago Casey told me she wanted to dress as "Lady Bug Girl" for Halloween. Lady Bug Girl is this awesome character in a series of kids' books. Her real name is Lulu, and she has an older brother. She is brave and funny and fierce and adorable! Here is the cover of the first book in the series.


On this Friday before Halloween it was wintery cold, somewhere in the lower 40s. So earlier that day I bought some warm black tights, some leg warmers, and a sweater to go with Casey's costume. Jacob and I helped Casey get dressed, and then we walked across the street from Casey's school to the Greek quad, where about a dozen frats and sororities were each throwing their own private Halloween party just for kids.

At the first house Jacob became the star four square player. The fraternity brothers lined up to play him and he got a lot of them out legitimately. It was the happiest I have seen Jacob in a long time.


To solve the leg tie problem, after the debacle at Linden, we just took them off. We also stopped by the house to paint the Ang arrow on Jacob's forehead. And, because all the fraternity guys grew up watching the Nickelodeon Avatar series, they knew just who Jacob was dressed as!


Casey admired the spooky spider webs.


She also looked just like Lady Bug Girl!


A very nice sorority sister helped Casey make a Halloween cat!



During the two hours that we spent in the Greek quad the kids netted a ton of candy, played games, made crafts, and generally had a blast! Though I've never been a huge fan of the Greek system, on this Friday afternoon they made everyone in my family very happy!

Adult Halloween Party---Very Adult Costumes!

Unsurprisingly, with all this activity on behalf of the kids' costumes, Josh and I did not have a lot of time to work on our own costumes. We had plans to go to the first "grown up" Halloween party as a couple since Jacob was a baby. Josh used the opportunity to think of something very practical that he needed, around which he would build a costume. He thought of a trench coat, and then he thought of some costumes that might work well with a trench coat (I'll let you use your imagination for a moment).

I had a different process. For most of my adult life my Halloween costumes have been political and/or abstract. I thought I might go as one of this year's stand out disasters, like the BP oil spill. I started looking around on the web only to discover that this is a commercially produced costume this year! Only $30.00, before the rush shipping and handling!


I decided to make my own much less expensive version. I got a pair of painter's coverall from Home Depot, printed out some BP decals, got one of the kids' construction hats, and some green tape to make my rain boots BP green. I got some spray paint, because it would dry more quickly, and voile! Here is the back of the costume.


We started our evening at David and Heather's. They were dressed as Don Draper and Joan Hathaway from Mad Men. Don't they look great? Josh is dressed as, you guessed it, a flasher. The old man's hat, creepy sunglasses and black socks really make the costume.


Here we are having our before-party cocktails!


The party was intense---it was full of adults who were mostly over 40, and everyone was in full costume. There was a Minnie and Mickey Mouse, an adult (sexy) Lady Bug Girl, an astronaut, Sonny and Cher, Boris and Natasha (cross dressing), several doctors and nurses, and a pair of Coneheads (from the old SNL skits). But we were definitely some of the most original costumes at the party!

Morning of October 31st

The night of the adult Halloween party Jacob spent the night at Travis's house. The next morning David and Heather took Travis and Jacob to Sunday School back in our neck of the woods---something that Jacob has been asking to do for awhile. (Obviously---a subject for a longer post!). We then all met up at our favorite Pittsburgh bistro, Point Bruegge, where we ate poached eggs and feta in puffed pastry over salad, pumpkin french toast, REAL Belgian waffles, and Eggs Benedict with crab cakes. Then the kids posed in a nearby alley and pretended they were in jail!

Halloween Night

It could be said that by the time we finally got to Halloween night that the holiday had lost a bit of its novelty---we had been celebrating non-stop for more than a week. But the kids were just as excited as ever, I spent the day perfecting their costumes.

For one, I finally got Jacob's straps to stay up. I won't bore you with the details, but VELCRO was involved.


I also made bags to match each costume. Casey had a bag covered in yellow ribbon with lady bugs on the ribbon. Jacob's bag has the air bender's nation's symbol on it.


We trick or treated in our new neighborhood, one street over, and got to satisfy our curiosity about how the other half lives. There were lots of nice houses and lots of families out trick or treating. Casey got tuckered out after the first 40 minutes, but Josh and Jacob stayed out about twice as long. Then we put the kids to bed and watched the Steelers game (boo hoo), and then I worked on this epic series of blog posts! I think I am officially done with Halloween!

Casey's List of Things to Do

Tonight I helped Jacob finish his homework. It is already 2 days late! As Jacob and I sat at the table and worked together Casey made some "writing" like scribbles on a piece of paper.

"What does it say?" I asked.

"This is my list," Casey replied.

"What's on it?"

"All these things:

Get a trap.
Catch a bunny.
It's so cute.
Do some gymkhana stuff.
Look at a leaf.
Play in a leaf pile.
All morning."

Halloween Party Dos and Don'ts

This post is a letter to my future self---things to remember for when I prepare a kids' only Halloween party in the future!

DOs

1) DO buy a party pack of plates, napkins and silverware. For $10.00 I was able to get place setting for 12, and it added instant festive atmosphere to our dining room!

2) DO get lots of ideas from the internet about food and games. I found some wonderful websites that had awesome food and game ideas. I printed them all out and used them to make my shopping list. Up until Sunday morning, the day of the party, I was pretty well prepared.

3) DO invite kids that know each other. One of the great challenges of our modern era is that between magnet schools, public schools and private schools, many of the children that we know go to different schools and/or participate in different after school and other activities. For this party I chose a mix of Jacob and Casey's school mates and neighbors. It worked well---the kids played well together and had a lot in common outside of the party experience.

4) DO keep most of the parents out of it. This was the first time we deliberately shooed parents away from the event, and it was a good choice. In the olden days, parents and siblings were never invited to a child's party, right? Of course having fewer adults created a more "Lord of the Flies" atmosphere at times (six 6-8 year old boys, in costume, anyone?), but it was nice not to worry about entertaining the adults when I wanted the focus to be on the kids. At the same time, the parents who did stay behind, were a huge help.

5) DO get my kids involved in the planning and decorating. Jacob and Casey helped me make the sugar cookies and Jacob washed all the miniature pumpkins for the party. He would have done a lot more if I had let him. Jacob's friend Ani also had some cool ideas (tying balloons to the tree in the front yard, for example) and Casey wanted to help more than I was able to let her, too.

6) DO make food that's easy to make ahead. The best success of the night was my dish called "monster toes." It was veggie sausage with a bit of crescent roll at the end, and then a "toenail" made out of a sliver almond and secured with a dab of cream cheese. They looked disgusting, but they were easy to prepare ahead of time and the kids gobbled them up



7) DO use a label maker. I marked each child's candy bag with his/her name, and it made it easy to identify a specific child's candy bag before he/she went home! It also helped me to make sure that kids with special diet needs (no dairy, for example) got the right candy mixture!

My list of "dont's" is a lot longer, because, let's face it---there was a lot of room for improvement in the party itself.

1) DON'T run out of coffee the day of the party. This is self-explanatory.

2) DON'T make food that seems utterly gross to me as I am making it. I don't eat meat, but I decided to try the mummy meatloaf from this year's Family Fun magazine.. The problem is, as Josh pointed out, a lot of kids don't like meatloaf. Even worse, I used store bought prepared meatloaf, and as it was cooking I could tell it was fatty hamburger and/or low quality meat. It smelled terrible as it was cooking. I would have been much better off adapting the mummy meatloaf technique to hot dogs, or even veggie dogs, and then I would have been so grossed out.



3) DON'T invite more kids than I want to come. I was shooting for 12, so I invited 16. Every child I invited came. 16 was A LOT of kids to entertain for 2.5 hours. Lesson learned.

4) DON'T yell at husband 30 minutes before the party. Sorry Josh! I'll do better next year.

5) DON'T plan too many food dishes and/or activities. In some ways this party was over planned. I had SO MANY ideas for things we should eat or do that I was overwhelmed and didn't get to finish most of them.

6) DON'T spend the day of the party working on Jacob and Casey's Halloween costumes. This was a costume party, and I hadn't finished Jacob's costume, so I spent a lot of the day sewing and tweaking Jacob's Avatar costume. Jacob's costume looked great for the party, but I didn't have time to prepare some of the games and activities I wanted to do!

7) DON'T leave Jacob and Casey out of the loop when it comes to thinking about hosting. I didn't talk to Jacob and Casey about how to be good hosts. Some of the most stressful moments of the party happened when Jacob needed my attention and I needed to do something for the group. If I had talked to him ahead of time I think he would have been able to handle his needs better. Also, Casey might have been willing to wear her costume! (She spent the night in her red leotard only, because, she said, it was "more comfortable.")



8) DON'T try to serve 16 children dinner at the same time with no help and no game plan. Yeah, really, don't do that again. Have more finger food, more help, and a game plan!

9) DON'T forget to take pictures! I was so overwhelmed during much of the party I forgot to take pictures! Big mistake!

OK---I think that's all....for now! Happy Halloween!

Talking Turkey

A few weeks ago we drove out to a turkey farm in order to take some pictures for the calendar. I also thought the kids might be grossed out by what Josh called the "turkey concentration camp." The worst part was the smell---I won't describe it in detail, but you can imagine that 1800 turkeys all crapping in one place was pretty rank. The biggest surprise was that the turkeys were white, and that female turkeys had pink heads and male turkeys had blue heads! At the end of the tour we bought some meat. So, yeah, I guess my hope that my family would be turned off by the turkey farm kind of back fired!

This Weekend Brought to You by Home Depot

Well, the intimate relationship between my children and corporations only continued this weekend when I announced that we were going to have a family yard-work day. Jacob dashed into the basement and unearthed the Home Depot kids' aprons that some nice Home Depot worker gave us when Casey and Jacob were having an in-store melt down the last time we were there.



Casey and Jacob also fought over the only pair of garden clippers. Casey called the clippers "the twigger." When Casey and Jacob got tired of fighting over the twigger they found other ways to amuse themselves outside.


Meanwhile, I used the Home Depot leaf blower that Ann and Larry got Josh for his birthday to clean up the leaves in the back. And Josh sculpted our front yard with a Home Depot electric hedge trimmer. He did a fantastic job---very professional. The only gaffe was when he accidentally cut through one of the extension chords with the trimmer. Whoops!


We can see our address number for the first time since we moved in! Nice job, family! And you, too, Home Depot.

Hey You Guys!!!!!!!

Do you remember The Electric Company? The kids show from the 1970s? That show was AWESOME. Morgan Freeman was on it!!!! Well, there's a new Electric Company and it comes on at 5:00 PM on weekdays. We've been watching it almost every day. It has some of the old cool stuff with letters and words, and some mostly dorky kids who have a running dramatic theme of some kind. It's filmed in New York, like the old one was, and there is some very hip cool culture/music/dance, etc. I thought I heard 50 cent (the rapper) on there today, but I could be wrong.

We were driving to a turkey farm last weekend (a subject for another post) and Jacob was playing with the Halloween card he got from his cool Aunt Cindy.

Suddenly, from the back seat I heard, "The Electric Company, The Electric Company!!!"

"Where?" I asked, craning my neck around to the back seat.

"Right here," he said, pointing to the tiny rose logo on the back of the greeting card. And then it hit me: The Electric Company is sponsored by American Greetings. They have a 30 second graphic commercial (tastefully done, of course) at the beginning of each show.

Rewind back to two weeks ago, when Jacob finally got to buy the "Pillow Pet" he had been trying to earn with stickers. As we rung up the "Pillow Pet" at the register, Jacob squeezed the Pillow Pet and said, "It's extra soft and machine washable!" Jacob had memorized the commercial EXACTLY.


(Here's the Pillow Pet Casey chose when she earned hers. She got a sticker for every night she slept through the night. She had to get 20 stickers to get the Pillow Pet!!!)

It gets worse. Last week we did some speed shopping for some tennis shoes for Jacob. He went wild for a pair of Sketchers. "Mom, the Z strap locks into place, every time!"

Ummmmm....I think it's safe to say that Jacob has been watching a little too much TV lately. He is a walking robot of consumer information! I hope the advertising industry is happy. Hey you guys, you are doing a great job!

Good Neighbors

When we first settled on Beeler Street we knew we had moved into what is, in effect, a college student haven. We watched from our front porch as middle aged landlords mowed lawns and stopped by to check on their tenants. We furrowed our brows at the odd bits of trash and equipment in one of our neighbor's back yard, and shuddered in horror when we saw the number of beer and alcohol bottles that piled up on Beeler Street on recycling mornings.

Our fears were not relieved when I attended a meeting of the Beeler Street Association hosted by CMU---at which I was treated to an explanation of solutions the neighborhood might think about for slowing the traffic and quieting the students on our street. The police reported that they had made a deliberate show of force during the first few weekends of the year with the goal of quelling the partying that happens more arduously before the semester workload reality has set it.

So far, though, knocking on wood and crossing our fingers, we have had a very pleasant fall on Beeler Street. Most of the student parties that have taken place on either side of us have not been that loud, and the occasional drunks that wander by our windows, shouting, have not been overwhelming enough to constitute critical mass. We actually like the student presence---they are active, interesting, and not nearly as obnoxious as we had feared.

Last week was the first time we have had to ask anyone to pipe down. At about 2:00 AM I had been awakened several times by loud conversations on the porch to one side of us, and so I donned my bathrobe and ventured out.

"Hey, my name is Kathy Newman and I'm your neighbor. We're trying to sleep and you guys are being too loud."

A few heads turned. "Oh, I'm sorry! I'll go turn down the music."

"It's not the music," I explained. "It's actually the voices on the porch. There's our bedroom windows." I pointed upwards. The porch denizens nodded. They even looked a bit embarrassed.

"We're sorry," one said.

"It's OK," I replied, and trudged off to bed. The noise abated and I fell asleep.

A few days later I came downstairs where Casey was reading in the living room.

"Look, Mama. Someone left us something."

On the porch was a large bag of oranges and two boxes of tea---Jasmine and Green Tea There was a post-it with an apology on it: "Sorry for the noise last weekend. From your neighbors."

I was truly surprised. And delighted. The apology was unexpected and the gifts were a nice touch. Over the years I have complained many times to my neighbors about noise. And never anything like this!

So, I have to say, so far Beeler Street has been one of the more welcoming neighborhoods we have lived in. Thanks, CMU students!

Fall Time

Fall time in Pittsburgh is one of the best times of the year. In September, when Josh was at a conference in DC, Casey and Jacob and I returned to the Blue Slide park in some new fall clothes!

Our dishwasher is broken

But Casey is working just fine!

We are definitely experiencing some new house hiccups. Our bathtub has been backed up twice, and the seal on the toilet had to be replaced. Now our dishwasher is leaking. Our house was insured by the previous owner, so it's not too hard to get these things fixed---but it does involve a lot of waiting around for repairmen!

In the meantime, Casey has been volunteering to help wash the dishes. Here she is in her bathing suit so she won't get her clothes wet! See more about Casey's cleaning enthusiasm below!

Maybe it skips a generation?

Dear Readers: if you know me, you know I don't like to clean. Oddly, however, my children do! Casey has been volunteering to clean anything I can think of to let her clean. And then Jacob has to do whatever Casey is doing, so he gets into it too! Here they are with squirt bottles cleaning windows and the side of the house!

More about First Grade

First grade is a still a bit of a mystery. And, as Lindsay pointed out (in the post below), 28 is a WHOLE LOT of kids for one class. It feels criminal to me. But if my choices are private school, public schools in the suburbs, or where we are now, I gotta say, I'm OK with where we are now.

This is partly because Jacob seems to thrive at Linden. I've been in New York since Thursday morning, but Josh reports that on Friday morning, before he and Casey got up, Jacob worked on his homework (instead of watching cartoons!), all by himself, for 45 minutes!

First grade home work is voluminous. Once a week we get a fat packet of 10-15 double sided stapled pages, and we are supposed to do certain pages on certain days. But I find it easier to let Jacob choose the pages he wants to work (always math first, which he knocks off in about 90 seconds).

Jacob also brings home school work every day. I love this drawing he made about "what he did on his summer vacation!"