Chicker Cheat!

A couple days before Halloween looking in our neighbors spooky yard.

This was the Bear's third Halloween and his first time trick-or-treating. We dressed him up as Dickie the Cat. So he wore a grey sweatsuit; I made him a grey, fluffy tail made of yarn; and sewed ears on his sweatshirt hood as well as a grey beanie because I knew he wouldn't want to wear his hood up. We also did face painting for the first time. Here he is in the early hours of the morning:

Since Dickie has white features on her face and a dark pink nose, that's what we did.

Mew.

He went to daycare that morning and of course rubbed most of it off by the time we got there. It was cute when we got to day care and he was crying (yes, still crying - but a positive update is coming tomorrow!) One of the teachers was dressed as a leopard and she knelt down to him and said, "What do you have on your face? What are you?" and through tears he said, "Caaat!" Ha.

Putting make up on was easy at first until I got to his nose - it tickled him and he reached up to rub the tickled nose, smearing the make up. That happened a lot. I used theatrical make up - which was a mistake. It is greasy and smudges easily. In order to make it not smear they sold me this spray that would make it stay on and be smudge free but it was terrible. Unfortunately I didn't test it on myself first. ALWAYS TEST STUFF ON YOURSELF FIRST! Lesson learned. When I asked him to close his eyes so I could spray he kept them slightly open so I ended up covering his eyes with my had. When I told him to close his mouth he closed it and then opened it right as I sprayed...spritz-right in the mouth. (He sometimes confuses the terms on/off and open/close.) That wasn't fun. And he cried a lot. When I sprayed it on my face before trick-or-treating that night I realized why he cried so much - because the stinkin' stuff stinged! BAD MAMA! Repeat: ALWAYS TEST STUFF ON YOURSELF FIRST! If we ever do face painting again I will use the Caran d'ache water color crayons which are water based and smudge free. I used them on my face all the time as a kid. NEXT TIME.

When I picked him up from daycare most of his make up was gone so when we got home I did black make-up on his face instead. I also did my face up as a kitty. We then practiced our meows and practiced saying, "Trick or Treat!" He says it, "Chicker Cheat!" Then we went trick-or-treating. It was very funny because it was about 5:30 pm, still light out, and so many jack-o-lanterns weren't lit. Mike and I kept saying, "Do we go to this house? I dunno?" We were so clueless. We finally mustered the courage and went to a house about 4 houses down that had decorations. Someone answered! I said to Stanley, "What do you say?" And he looked up to the man and said, "Pease!" (please) Haha. He got a Hershey's bar. We told him he had to wait until we got home to eat any candy. He held it in his hand, he didn't want to put it in his bag. When we got to the next house he said please again. That is what he said the majority of the time. Several times he said nothing and just signed the word for please. A couple times he actually said chicker cheat. He also wanted to hold his candy in his hand which became ridiculous by the fifth house. The third house we got to had a witch on the door and it scared him so much he wanted me to carry him. There were about 3 more houses that scared him so much that he ran from them saying, " 'nother house! 'nother house!" This was a good teachable moment about pretend, fake, spooky and scary...oh, and the emotions/feelings that come along with it. Because even if something spooky isn't real your feelings are very real and that's o.k. to feel whatever you are feeling. So we took a sidewalk break to talk to him about that. People here really go all out for Halloween. Our neighbor David, who has this amazing Gates of Hell-like facade on his back house/garage all year around,  had smoke machines, skulls, dracula (Jock-ooh-la, as the Bear says), ghosts, witches, rats, tombstones and lights in his yard. Another house had a smoking cauldron and spooky music. Another house had a mechanical angel of death that was knelt down with it's hands over it's face and was activated by sound. Once it heard you it looked up from it's hands and it's eyes lit up blue or green and it started laughing and saying angel of death things...that one definitely spooked me at first. He also ran away from a 7 year old ghost. It was definitely one of those times where I questioned things like, "Is he too young for this?" But talking to him about stuff is extremely helpful and successful.

We slowly kept moving his tail higher and higher up because he kept wanting to take it off (it was getting in the way of his walking). You can see above that it's pinned to his jacket hood.

When we got home we managed to have dinner! And we let him pick out one piece of candy for dessert. I think all in all he had a good time...and he didn't wake up in the middle of the night with nightmares of rabid rats and skeletons with eyeballs popping out. 

This is one side of our neighbor's yard.

You can see the little ghost that Stan B was afraid of walking up the steps. (He doesn't have his scary mask on.)

Meow.

Here is a video of the bear walking up to someone's door saying, "knock knock!" as he knocks and then signing, "please"!

chicker cheating from erin kawamata on Vimeo.

And for a look back at his first two Halloweens you can click here.