Day 1,168 - All Alone a.k.a. Mulching Mania

As a parent, I find that I'm rarely afraid of being alone. With my extraverted nature, it used to feel like pure torture. After being a stay-at-home dad and having tiny humans begging for my time around the clock, I now take great solace in my alone time. It really doesn't matter if I'm reading a book, playing a video game, or watching TV. Those rare moments alone are pretty stellar as far as I'm concerned. For Ethan though, being unexpectedly alone is one of the scariest things in the world.

For the record, Ethan actually doesn't mind being alone under normal circumstances. At least once a day, he will disappear to his room to read books or solve puzzles on his own before reappearing up to 30 minutes later. He's also really good about entertaining himself while I'm making dinner most nights. This stands out because for all her good qualities, Ellie never excelled at entertaining herself. In fact, outside of her quiet times, that's still a relatively difficult task for her. The moral of the story here is that while Ethan doesn't mind being by himself, he doesn't enjoy it when it's completely unexpected.

It's important for me to mention that I would never intentionally leave Ethan at home alone. Most days I don't even go outside while Ethan is napping. This week is kind of an exception though because we have lots and lots of leaves. I mean LOTS OF LEAVES. Taking that into account, I felt like mulching leaves in the backyard was a pretty good use of Ethan's naptime and headed outside to do just that.

Just keep mulching, just keep mulching...

During my mulching escapades, I made sure to take a quick break every time I filled my mulching bag to poke my head inside and listen for Ethan. Four mulching bags in and Ethan was still asleep. However, at some point between four and five, that would change. After five, I poked my head inside and heard the sounds of intense crying. I quickly ran inside and opened the subbasement door only to find Ethan sitting at the top of our kitchen stairs crying. It took a few minutes to calm him down but I finally convinced him to come join me outside as I finished mulching a few more leaves.

As soon as I finished my final batch of leaves for the day, Ethan immediately came and asked if I would push him on the nest swing in the backyard. Of course, I'm never going to complain about getting to push either of my kids on the swing so we did just that. After a while, Ethan had his fill of the nest swing and wanted to move to the traditional bench swing hanging from our deck. The great thing about pushing him on that swing is that he faced me the entire time meaning I could see the big smile on his face as I pushed him over and over. 

Looking back at the day, I realize that it was probably my fault Ethan reacted the way he did to being "alone". I didn't actually tell him where I would be when he woke up. Therefore, he probably did panic when he couldn't find me. However, we did get to have a good talk about how he should never panic in those situations because I'll never be too far away. The challenge is to see if either of us learned anything from this experience or if we'll be doomed to repeat in the future. Time will ultimately answer that question for us. #DaddyWrite

He clearly wasn't too upset with me because I did receive an affectionate head pat.

Day 1,160 - The One Where I Finally Write About Halloween

Happy Halloween!!!

Actually, I know that those well wishes are about three days too late. However, since Bethany used two days of vacation time to start the week, today is actually the first opportunity I have had to wish people a Happy Halloween.

Our Halloween celebration was actually spread out over a couple of days. Ellie got to start the celebration off by getting to go to school in her costume on Friday. What was her costume you may ask? She was Minnie Mouse! The funny thing is that this actually marked the second time she has dressed up as Minnie Mouse. She did so when she was 2 years old and spent Halloween night placing candy bars in trick-or-treaters' baskets while wearing a pair of homemade mouse ears made out of a headband and some old t-shirts. For the record, it was only t-shirts. Nothing else. I definitely wouldn't use a ratty old pair of underwear for something like that.

Truth be told, it was actually really strange to see Ellie reprising her Minnie Mouse costume this year. For one, the two pictures side-by-side really serve to show how much she has grown in the last three years. She certainly looks more like a young woman than a little girl which is crazy because she's still only five years old!

Back to Halloween though. After a fun day at school where Ellie got to go a bunch of Halloween-themed activities which included pumpkin carving, slime-making, and of course, snack-eating, on Friday night, we would return to school for trunk-or-treating. What was great about trunk-or-treating is that Ethan got to join in the fun as well. Who was Ethan on this (early) All Hallows Eve? Easy, he was Buzz Lightyear of Star Command! 

Surprisingly enough, even though we got to school less than 15 minutes after trunk-or-treating began, we still had to wait close to 20 minutes to even get to the first car. Once inside though, Ellie and I happily made our way from car to car on a relatively brisk evening. I say Ellie and I because Ethan gave out after approximately 10 minutes of actually trunk-or-treating. No worries though. The only negative part of the evening was that both kids were slightly afraid of the extremely creepy clowns in line directly behind us. No one attacked though so it was just fine.

Fast forward to Sunday and the actual day of Halloween. After a fun afternoon at home, Ellie and Ethan got dressed in their costumes around 6:00 pm and we hit the neighborhood for some quick trick-or-treating before passing out candy for the rest of the evening. While trick-or-treating with the kids was definitely fun, it ultimately didn't take long before Ellie and Ethan were both complaining of being cold and were ready to go home. Once we got home, Ellie was excited and ready to hand out candy to trick-or-treaters. Unfortunately, we didn't have a single person show up before the kids went to bed for the night.

On the flip side though, we now have more than enough candy to last us until next Halloween. At least I assume it'll last that long. Who actually knows? #DaddyWrite