As analogies go, it’s not overly inventive. Of course our house is sometimes like a zoo; we have a 10 month old, an almost 3 year old, and three ancient cats. I work, Sean works, and Anna juggles our crazy kids during the day. Sometimes it’s loud, and sometimes it’s smelly. And there’s nearly always something interesting to see. Sounds like the zoo to me.

It’s the only real photo we have of them together in their costumes!

It has been for at least two solid months that Maya has had her costume and Ian’s chosen. We let it bake for a couple weeks before we finally pulled the trigger, but we had their costumes purchased already several weeks ago (holy shit, we were ahead for a change). This year for Halloween, Maya was a giraffe, and Ian was an elephant.

Maya’s third Halloween!

We saw both of these creatures last month when we visited the Denver zoo (more on that soon, hopefully). And better still, we thought a fun souvenir for the kids would be a stuffed giraffe for Maya and a stuffed elephant for Ian. Maya of course is very into her stuffed giraffe (which has joined the crazy array of creatures that sleeps with her). Ian likes his elephant about as well as he likes anything else: briefly and with a bit of slobber.

Ian’s first Halloween!!

We thought that this year would be the first year that Maya would try trick-or-treating. We’ve been working on her off and on for the past week to say the magic words after she rings the doorbell (you know, trick-or-treat). She never would do it. Her fate was sealed today when Ian, who has lately come down with what seems like a bit of a cold, decided to short his nap by an hour. He was crabby and Maya wouldn’t say trick-or-treat, so we decided that maybe next year would be The Year.

We did get it together to go to our neighborhood’s block party. Another couple who lives on our street are probably about our age and just had their first baby in September. They hosted our block party. When Maya was 1.5 months, there’s no way in hell I was hosting anything. And here these fine folks were, hosting a party for our street.

The Hoot!

Our jack-o-lantern was again sort of non-traditional. Maya worked out that she wanted “a hoot,” which is to say an owl. Last year we had a cat. She and nanny Anna found a design they liked online. Anna drew it, I carved it, and Sean and Maya installed the candle. Maya watched the lit up jack-o-lantern on its opening night and exclaimed, “It’s candling!!!” I took a shot at letting Maya remove some pumpkin guts this year. She gingerly fingered one seed before dropping it and moving to playing with shiny, clean kitchen tools instead.