I’m copying my friend Brooke and maybe some others because I guess this is a thing, but I’m going to try to blog every day in November (and then some because I’m already two days behind) and who knows what I’ll say but I’m thinking some people might unfollow me, and I’ve made peace with this. But then again, some might be bored and looking to read about me every day of their life, so it balances out.

For Halloween Joel dressed as Yoda from Star Wars. I’ve never seen a Star Wars movie in my life, but when we visited Mark’s parents in Iowa we went to Target to find a costume, and the Yoda one was really cute, and the baby on the package looked like Joel (or maybe not) so we purchased it and flew it back home with us. Mark is a Star Wars fan, so he was even more excited about it, and his family was excited too.

We also bought Joel one of those glow stick sword things. Mark’s mom has been referring to them as “lifesavers” for as long as I can remember, so, this summer, in front of both our favorite nannies (Emily and Holly) I referred to Joel’s foam sword toy as a “lifesaver” and nobody EVER corrected me until Halloween when Mark’s dad clarified that this thing Yoda carries is actually called a lightsaber, so now I’m sure everyone thinks I’m an idiot. (Thanks, Sharon!)

Mark’s parents visited for Halloween, and it was really nice to have them here. I didn’t go to work (skipped the belated Boss’s Day luncheon), and Mark took half the day off work, and Mark and his dad worked most the day to finish installing our backyard fence, which is the final piece of our massive landscaping project. They got so enthralled with doing this that we didn’t have any time to carve the pumpkins on our porch as we’d so intended, and I had to drag them inside around 5:00pm when it was time to get ready to go trick-or-treating.

We got Joel dressed up in his Yoda costume, and he looked so cute, and then we handed him his lightsaber, and he ran around the house with it pretending it was a vacuum cleaner.

Then we all got dressed and ready to go out in the freezing weather… Our first stop was a friend’s house just around the corner. We rang the doorbell and set Joel on the ground, and, as we waited for them to answer, Joel jammed his lightsaber into the ground and tripped and face planted into their front lawn and then his face turned red, and he started hollering. Our friends answered the door, and he calmed down shortly thereafter, but he wouldn’t smile at our friends at all. (He, oddly, never smiles at these particular people.)

Then we went across the street to this other family’s house… Mark wants to be social with them, because they have a three-year-old boy, and one day said boy was playing soccer outside with his dad, and Joel was like, “Ehhhh, ehhhh,” meaning, “I want to go over there,” so they socialized for a bit that day. So Mark and his family and Joel went up to the door while I kind of hung back. (I’m less social, in case you didn’t know.)

We’ve been going to this Methodist church in our neighborhood, and the pastor lives really close to us, so we visited his house next. They had a fire on their front porch, and they were handing out full-sized candy bars! Joel was impressed by the fire and the people (pastors have lots of friends), and we, specifically Mark and his mom, were impressed by the candy bars, but I had to limit them to one.

At one point, a friend of the pastor’s looked at Mark and was like, “Hey – I remember you! A few years ago, when you were considering moving here, you knocked on our door to ask how we liked the neighborhood!”

And all I could think was, “And you haven’t seen us since because our baby died.”

It quickly became 6:30pm, so we drove downtown to St. Louis Bread Company to grab a bite to eat. On our way home, we drove by this house a couple of streets up (and up a hill) from ours where the owners put up an obscene amount of decorations for not just Halloween but also every holiday, and we realized that ALL of our neighborhood’s trick-or-treaters (like hundreds of them) flood this area, but almost none of them venture down to our immediate area, and, we hypothesized that even fewer will/would/ever venture to our specific house, because it’s on a gravel road, and, as Mark’s mom noted, “I wouldn’t let my kids walk on a gravel road.”

Once we arrived back home, we came inside and we turned on all of our lights to ensure our house seemed welcoming in the event the wayward trick-or-treater ended up in our neck of the woods. At about 7:00pm our doorbell rang, and Mark’s mom was like, “YESSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!” And she grabbed ALL of our candy and put it in a plastic bag from our local grocery store.

She opened the door enthusiastically (which is maybe even an understatement), and there was this blonde, maybe fourth grade girl standing there by herself (her dad was behind her in the street), and Mark’s mom shouted, “YOU are the lucky winner!!!” And she handed her this huge bag of candy. And then Mark’s mom was like, “I see you’ve dressed as an Indian.”

And this little girl got allllllll uncomfortable and fidgety and was like, “Ummmmm… No. I’m a Native American…”

And it was suuuuuper awkward from there – like a scene out of a movie.

So then we closed the door, and Mark’s mom was like, “I bet she’ll be back next year!”

And I was like, “I bet she won’t.”

It was the best Halloween we’ve had in quite some time… Pre-2014 (and in 2014) I didn’t care much about the holiday. 2015 was obviously the worst Halloween of my life. We turned off all of our lights and watched a movie in the basement while I cried intermittently. Last year (2016) Joel was just over three months old, and we dressed him as a football and he cried his face off and I probably had mastitis (again), so we really didn’t make a big deal of it. This year, I think Joel was kinda-sorta old enough to vaguely enjoy the holiday, and it was fun to watch him do so. But even with said fun, my heart was heavy, as it always will be… I couldn’t help but picture the little Darth Vader or Chewbacca who should have accompanied him.