"I wish Papa was here so you can give candy to the other kids", Saffron tells me as we're driving to Whole Foods after school. She had a half day today which gave us an hour to run errands together before picking up Cinnamon and Sage. Usually I stay home and take care of the candy-handing-out duties while my husband takes the kids trick-or-treating around the neighborhood. Since my husband is still in Canada, we had to improvise.
I was going to leave a small note on the bowl of candy. Then Saffron wanted to write it, which turned into a wonderful memory of both her writing and drawing. She drew a house with all of three of them in their costumes. Sagey, in his bumblebee costume, was left outside the house since she ran out of space to draw him inside.
I had the kids rest a bit after returning from school today. I told them they needed to sleep. They don't sleep - at least not the girls. Sagey, on the other hand, can sleep for hours. When the girls were babies, they did not have the usual nap schedules that other babies had. So why would I expect them to sleep now? Well, it turns out they did in fact sleep for over an hour.
I had to pry them from the overly warm beds so they could put on their costumes and go out. They kept resisting and I kept insisting. I didn't want them to miss out since they'd been looking forward to wearing their costumes for a while. I also didn't want to miss our tradition of taking our yearly photo of them.
I had made plain jasmine rice in anticipation of dinner. However, it was getting dark outside and we decided to do the Halloween "thing" first. The weather was just right - not too warm, not too cold. As soon as we returned home, the kids took off their costumes and wanted to eat. Candy? No, they wanted to eat the rice - with feta. Saffron even wanted to have one piece of broccoli on it which she proceeded to crumble on top of the rice. Progress, I'd say. Although the slight fever the girls had might also have had contributed to the desire for healthier eating. After dinner, they asked to have a little candy. I gave them each three pieces before having them get ready for bed. I'm glad they did not gather too much candy tonight. Earlier in the day I went to World Market to get more of the good chocolates and more Haribo gummy bears. That and more lebkuchen and pfeffernüsse. "Quality over quantity" is what we keep teaching them.