Our Skeletons

The Costumes
Back in September, Noah spent 24hrs campaigning to wear a skeleton costume to a superhero birthday party: 1. Pirates like skeletons. 2. Doctors use skeletons to help people. 3. Superheros help people => Skeletons are superheros! 
He went as a firefighter.

But 2 weeks later, we visited Josh's clinic to find a skeleton poster on his wall. I knew right then it was game over. So we dove in, buying second-hand black clothes and glow-in-the-dark paint. I figured Aaron would want to copy Noah so we might as well do both.

Until we were putting on costumes this afternoon and Aaron insisted on his firefighter costume (from when N was 2). Hence, we had a fire-fighting skeleton and a motorcycling skeleton on our neighborhood rounds this evening.

The Anticipation
Noah, the veteran, has been counting down the days. He spent most of the neighborhood pre-party (stocked with brownies & cookies) asking when we could go house-to-house for candy.

The Discovery
I was amazed how quickly Aaron caught on to the pattern: walk to door, get candy, eat candy, repeat. We weren't planning to eat as we walked, but he was so devastated that people were giving him candy and we were taking it away, that I figured I'd let him suck on a lollipop while we walked. I didn't realize this would create the expectation that he would eat whatever he received when he received it. When we got to the next door, he put his half-eaten lollipop in the candy basket so he could pick up something new.

He also found it disconcerting that he was shown a treasure trove of candy, allowed to take some, and then not allowed to take all of it. But he worked through the trauma like any good candy-lover and used the extra sugar high to make it around the block with plenty of energy to spare when he got home.