Friday, Oct. 5, 2012

Halloween has always been one of my favorite holidays.  Everything about it makes me happy.  As a kid, I counted down the days with rapt fascination till Halloween would arrive.  When I became pregnant with my oldest son, the significance of my joy over Halloween grew—tenfold!

All I could think of was how fun it would be to share my joy with my unborn child.  To watch his face light up, hopefully, with the same appreciation of the holiday as I had.  Since he was born in January, I had to wait almost a full year before that reality could play out.  But when it did….

When I recently moved, I smiled fondly at my son’s first Halloween costume, a fuzzy, full-body penguin, complete with a hood to transform his head into that of a chubby little penguin.  He wasn’t walking yet that first Halloween, so I carried him or had him in his stroller.  With great anticipation, I placed him in his costume and couldn’t wait to stroll the neighborhood with him, introducing him to one of my favorite nights of the year.

Some little kids get confused or overly excited, some even frightened, by the strange goings on associated with Halloween, especially when everyone is in costume.  But not my son.  He watched everything with great attention as if he was taking it in so he could sort it all out later when he was a bit older and could make better sense of it.

LOL.

One of the best parts of being a parent is how we have the opportunity to expose our children to new experiences that will broaden their view and understanding of the world.  Not that we impose our likes or dislike on them.  Well…I suppose we do…a bit.  But to share new circumstances with them, such as I got to do with my son that first Halloween, those are the gems that make parenting the magical adventure it is.