Halloween 2009

I was cautiously optimistic about Halloween this year. Will is so opinionated lately especially about putting on clothes and us getting him to do anything that's not his idea. (case in point: Luke ordered a shirt for him from a motorcycle builder that he likes. It arrived in the mail, was obviously a little too big, but Luke wanted to try it on Will just to see. Um, no, that wasn't going to happen. Every time Luke even went near the shirt Will ran for the hills doing his best fake cry all the way)

Needless to say, I was unsure how he would react to us attempting to dress him up in this costume and get him to "perform" (aka: go trick or treating) Fortunately for us, we had a wonderful bribery tool on our side: CANDY!

For a couple of weeks we had been talking about going trick-or-treating and I had told him many times that when you say trick-or-treat you get candy! We even practiced in plainclothes: "Will, say trick-or-treat!" (with all the enthusiasm I could muster) Will: NO. "Will, if you say trick-or-treat you get candy!" Will: staring at me not sure if he should believe me. Eventually I got him to say it and handed over a starburst. He seemed interested! ...which is why I included the optimistic in my caustiously optimistic attitude about the day.

So Halloween comes along and it's time to dress him. Luke and I both unassumingly venture into his bedroom for the event. I inconspicuously get his costume out of the closet and open it up. He notices something is awry and begins to watch me from across the room. I say (with my MOST excited flare) Will! It's Halloween and once you put on your costume you get CANDY!! mmm, nope, it wasn't going to work. First of all, I had to put tights on him because his costume was shorts and it was chilly outside. Talk about an added challenge. So I put him on my lap facing out and am literally wrestling him and holding down his arms while trying to force his legs into said tights. He is screaming, and doing his best (which was quite impressive) to undo any progress I was making with the tights. I put his foot in, and he pulls it out. I force his foot in, he pushes the tights off with his other foot, and so on. Eventually Luke swooped in with candy in hand and told Will that if he put on his tights he got candy! So Will let me put on his tights and got a piece of candy. That's how the whole event went, piece of costume on, candy for Will. By the time he had it on he had consumed more candy than he does in a typical 2 week period. Oh well, it's Halloween, right?

Fortunately the evening went uphill from there. We went to my mom's house and trick-or-treated in her neighborhood. He did such a great job! As we were walking up to houses he would shout Trick-or-Treat! Once we got to the door and they actually opened it up he was a little more shy and any would say it much more softly. Then he would say Thank You. I was very proud of him. And when we got back to my mom's house he didn't even want to take off his costume!

When we were on our way to my mom's house this past Tuesday, he said "We have Halloween at nana's tonight?" I had to explain it only comes around once a year and we'll have to wait until next Halloween to do it again. I guess it was a success!