Halloween

Wow, what a Halloween! Seems like most holidays are turning into seasons these days. We definitely had a full week of Halloween this year. Sam was even learning about witches, ghosts, pumpkins, etc. in his day care class.



Sam started his Halloween week with a classroom party at day care. They had all sorts of treats, and he brought home several goodie bags.



Friday night was the Halloween carnival at day care. We had dinner with the Johnsons. Sam and Jackson got to play for a while too. They played so well together. They were sharing toys and chasing each other around the house laughing. It's nice that they are now at an age where they are playing with each other instead of just around each other.

Sam went as a monkey, but he wouldn't wear the hat part. He didn't get a nap that day because I took him to the ENT after lunch. (He didn't have an ear infection, just drainage.) So, when we got to the carnival at 7:30 he was already tired. I think he was a little overwhelmed by all the people too. We staid for a while and tried to get him to play a few games, but he really wanted to be held the whole time. It was a little too warm for that with that monkey costume.



He got a few treats at the carnival. He got a big kick out of sharing his sucker with me.



We went to a pumpkin patch down the road from our house on Saturday to get some pumpkins to carve. Sam saw a puppy in a car and he wanted to play with him, so we had to bribe him with goldfish crackers to get him to look at the pumpkins.



Once he forgot about the dog, he had fun exploring. They had pumpkins of all sizes. Sam tried to walk on the tiny ones.



Here he is rearranging their display.



When we got home, Sam spent a lot of time dumping his treats out and putting them back in the pumpkin. One of his goodies was a can of orange playdough. He would pick out little pieces and give them to us. He also had some sheets of stickers. I tried to play with him and put stickers on a sheet of paper, but he doesn't like it when the stickers stick to him.



Here's a picture of Chris carving the pumpkins. Sam wasn't interested in helping pull the pumpkin guts out, but he did watch for a while. He was mesmerized when they were done and glowing.



Here are the finished products.



Here's a shot of Sam in his monkey costume on Halloween. He was more interested in carrying his costume around than he was in actually wearing it. He stopped crying as soon as we opened the door and he saw all the kids coming up to the house. We hit about six houses. Sam didn't quite understand the concept. He tried to go into the first few houses when they opened their doors. He carried his bucket for a while, but mostly Melanie and I took turns holding it. Chris staid at home and handed out candy.



When we got home from trick-or-treating, Sam couldn't wait to dump out his treats. He even added a few extra pieces of candy from the bowl we were using to hand out candy. We were surprised at how many kids visited our house this year. They all came in big groups too. Seems like the parents were really organized. Even some of the parents were in costumes too.

Sam is learning so much. He really understands a lot of what we are saying now. He's trying to say new words too. The latest ones are Momma, hi, bye, hey, mine, light, fish, bat, and moo.

• My favorite new word is Momma. He's finally saying Momma!
  
• I found out he could say fish by pointing at one in a book and asking him what it was. I was quite surprised that he answered, though it sounded like jeesh.
  
• He started waving bye-bye again this week. I heard him say bye once or twice too.
  
• Hi was his favorite new word this weekend. He said hi to everyone he saw.
  
• He must have been in a possessive mood yesterday afternoon because everything was "mine." We didn't hear it today, but he's probably entering that phase.
  
• There are some bats on his sheets of stickers. He points to them when he's saying it so that's how I know what he's talking about. It doesn't sound much different from cat, so it's hard to tell what he's saying.
  

Some of his words he uses unprompted, but others we have to point to something and ask him what it is, or we try to get him to repeat words after us.

Sam's tantrums are a little stronger now. He's starting to try to scratch us when he gets mad at us. I haven't quite figured out what to do about that. I mostly walk away unless I'm changing his diaper when he's doing it ... now that's annoying.



Here is a video of Sam playing at the playground by our house.