Sunday, October 31, 2010: Boo

I hate Halloween. Okay, that's not actually true. I love candy and so I am legally obligated to appreciate any holiday with candy as its centerpiece. Also I'm a sucker for cute kids in costumes. I, however, decline to dress up for Halloween. The older I get the less into it I am. The first year we lived in this house I was so excited to pass out candy on Halloween. I cued up "spooky" music (Metallica, maybe? I can't even remember. It might have even been Múm, for ambiance, I guess) and stood by with a big heaping bowl full of empty calories. I'd say it was about half kids and half teenagers without costumes who shove a pillow case at you/grown ass adults holding out a bag "for the baby." For the baby, my ass. It's for you. And anyway, babies shouldn't eat candy. So either way I'm shaking my head, sad at it all.

But now that I have a kid things are different. We didn't take him trick-or-treating (see above comment re: babies and candy), but he did help me pass out candy to the kids (and grown-ups) and that was awesome. Perhaps a little frustrating to the sweatsuit clad "kids" who wouldn't even need a fake I.D. to buy a pack of cigarettes. But with real, actual kids he was a hit. I'd give him something from the candy bowl and he'd drop it in the bag. He caught on to this really quickly and took his job very seriously. In between bursts of kids he'd wait at the window, sometimes pounding his Tootsie Roll-filled fists against the glass when he saw kids on the other side of the street, trying to get their attention.

Gavin's candy handing out skills aren't surprising since he's all about the preposition "in" these days (also I think it helped that he has never eaten candy and thus didn't really recognize the items he was handling as edible so much. Otherwise I don't think he'd be so keen to let them fall from his grasp). He likes to put things away. In fact, the other day he actually corrected me, though he didn't know that's what he was doing. I was putting dishes away and there were a couple of Tupperware (except, not Tupperware since I don't think we own anything that brand, I just can't think of what to call it) lids that needed to be put away in the drawer where we keep such lids. Only that drawer is a pain in the ass and always has too many lids in it and to put anything away in there you often have to rearrange everything and I was just not in the mood. So I put the lids in the cupboard with the containers themselves, which is the cupboard Gavin is allowed to get into. Later in the day he decided to pull stuff out of the cupboard (a favorite pastime) and while he was engaged with that I turned my back for a second to let the dogs inside. When I turned around he was pulling at the lid drawer, which does not open easily. "Do you want to open that?" I asked him. Since it's just a bunch of lids I thought, sure, why not? And as I reached for the drawer I saw he had the two lids I'd put in the cupboard in his hand. Sure enough, when I opened the drawer he put them both in. This pretty much blew my mind.

On Thursday Gavin's day care had a Halloween party. Gavin went as a dog. His Granny Marilyn bought him the costume. He looked very cute, needless to say. He did not leave his costume on long and I can't really blame him. He had playing to do and couldn't be weighed down by his canine persona. There were so many adorable kids in costumes. One baby, a few months younger than Gavin, was dressed as Yoda and it was pretty much the cutest baby costume I've ever seen (well, besides this). I really loved getting to watch Gavin in action at day care. Granted, the room was crowded with kids decked out in costume and their parents so it wasn't exactly a picture of the day-to-day operations. But I got to see where he eats lunch. In fact, Stacy even gave him a little angel food cake that he ate sitting at his little table. It's clear that his day care teachers like him quite a bit. He seems to like them, too, though was a little shy because of all the commotion and didn't give Shelly his customary high-five. We'd also kept him up late so we could go to the party, so that probably didn't help his disposition. Even so, he was happy and perfectly content to push a walker and then a pink toy umbrella stroller around the room, seemingly oblivious to all of the long legs all around him. "He loves that stroller," Debbie said. So now when I picture him at day care I picture him pushing that around, talking to himself. Not unlike a homeless person with a shopping cart.

Yesterday morning and the morning before that I was greeted first thing with a big sloppy Gavin kiss. Open mouth, always. In fact, he sucker-clamped onto my face with no warning and managed to lick my teeth. Super gross. I'm a very big supporter of brushing and gargling in the morning before I do anything else with my mouth. Still, it was adorable in that it sure beats him jetting out of bed without even acknowledging I exist, which is how it's been for a long time now. (For the record, he does not sleep with us, but Stacy brings him in the bed in the morning to nurse. Then we all get to cuddle. And it is very nice.) In fact the other day he actually clung to me when Stacy tried to take him. Because I am a kind and caring wife I did not say, "See how it feels?" Actually I did. That's exactly what I said.