Burrito Baby and Halloween excitement

Our neighbours have had Halloween decorations up since August. Thanks to them, Rachel has been begging to decorate for Halloween since—you guessed it—August. Grandma said we can decorate next week, but she brought home some special Halloween socks for the girls that she found while she was out shopping today. Miriam was so excited to try hers on when she woke up from her nap but she simply couldn't figure them out—they were stuck together in the packaging so she thought Grandma had only given her one sock. Silly Grandma.

Miriam toddled up to me clutching both pairs of socks.

"Mimi wear Mimi's sock. Mimi wear Rachey's sock, too!" she told me.

"You can only wear your socks," I told her. "The other socks are for Rachel."

Looking exasperated, Miriam explained, "Mimi's sock one foot. Rachey's sock won-an foot."

Won-an is how she says "another" or "other."

"Oh! Do you think you only have one sock?" I asked.

She nodded.

"Watch this!" I said, grabbing some scissors. "If we take a pair of scissors and cut this tag off then your socks multiply and you have..."

"Twos socks!" she squealed delightedly.

This momma knows how to work some magic! It's a pretty neat trick, if I do say so myself. Miriam happily tried on her pair of socks. They have little jack-o-lantern faces on them. She loves them.

Then (because Rachel was out shopping with Grandma (different store, don't worry) and we had Miriam all to ourselves) we played Burrito Baby—we wrapped Miriam up in her blanket just like (or kind of like) how we'd do when she was teeny tiny. 

I guess it's been a while since we've swaddled her because she was way out of practice! She's always been an avid thumb-sucker and keeping her hands under wraps was impossible when she was a newborn—she'd have her hands out in two seconds, flat. Today she flopped around on the floor for about a minute before she managed to wrangle her arms loose.

It was hilarious to watch...and apparently the struggle wore her out. Either that or being swaddled was so cuddly that she couldn't help but let a yawn escape.

She was much quicker the second time around.

When Rachel got home and saw that Miriam was wearing her Halloween socks, she wanted to try her own Halloween socks on. Then she requested that I check to see if we had any Halloween outfits—they've been up in the girls' highest closet shelf since going through Olivia and Sabrina's hand-me-downs about a year ago. It took me forever to find them—I thought perhaps I had put them in my own closet—but Rachel knew right where they were. Funny. 

After getting in their Halloween outfits the girls wanted their picture taken.  

The past several years I've forgotten to break out their holiday-specific clothing until it's all but too late to wear. Somehow the holidays keep sneaking up on me—Andrew says that part of reason for that is because we spent two years living in a place that doesn't celebrate our same holidays (hello, Egypt!) but I think most of it is just me. Now that Rachel is four, though, and is able to keep track of things like seasons and months and which holidays belong in said seasons and months I think we'll be getting a lot more festive a lot sooner than we've been doing for the past few years.

We'll get several wears out of these Halloween outfits instead of like...two. Won't that be nice?

(Rachel has already decided she wants to be a witch this year and after a particularly difficult day with her I'm thinking that a witch might not be a bad fit, after all. I was hoping she'd be something "cute" instead of something "scary" but she'll probably change her mind twenty times before Halloween, anyway, so what's the point in trying to dissuade her now?)

In our house, after picture-taking comes picture-viewing. I haven't yet told Rachel that when I was younger we had to develop film...and I wouldn't see the pictures people took of me for days or weeks, if not months or years. She'll probably think that's the most archaic thing she's heard of because I've been entertaining her with the camera since she was born. Anyway, after we took the pictures of the girls in their Halloween outfits, we looked at them, and I flipped a little too far and Rachel caught a glimpse of the video of Miriam being a Burrito Baby. Rachel got on the floor and started imitating Miriam's flopping and wriggling. 

I took a video of that, too, but it got boring really fast. Rachel thought it was so funny at the beginning and had a huge (and beautiful) smile on her face while she squirmed on the floor. Then she realized that it probably wasn't as fun as it would be if she was actually struggling to free herself from a blanket and her smile faded into a look of absolute ennui—yet she kept on worming around on the floor.

Perhaps tomorrow when the afternoon is getting to us I'll let Rachel have a turn as the Burrito Baby.