Halloween and confidence

It's amazing what parents will put themselves through to ensure their child has fun. However - speaking as a subject matter expert - kids under two rarely cooperate.

We have family in town this week, and since last night was Halloween we thought it would be fun to get everyone dressed up and go trick or treating at our church's annual "Trunk or Treat." More on that in a minute. The whole event really started when we first put everyone in costumes.

Timothy, being four months old, was pretty indifferent to the whole thing. The visiting cousins, especially the oldest, were pretty excited about dressing up. And I figured Grace would be too. She had happily picked out her costume at the store (a cow) and mooed at it when she saw me take it off the hanger to get her ready. I thought she'd be equally as thrilled to wear it. Not so much.

Her first words when she looked at herself in the mirror?

"All done. All done."

But of course, we parents weren't done. We had to mark this special occasion with photos. Here's the best shot I could get:

"Trunk or Treat" was really cool. Tons of costumes, tons of candy, and a 30-foot inflatable slide. Each of the 50 or so cars that kids could walk up to were decorated to a theme. There was a pirate ship, more than a few luaus, and an homage to Charlie Brown's Great Pumpkin.

Grace may not have been excited before, but I thought for sure she'd turn when she saw all of this going on. Not so much.

There were probably about 500 people when we showed up. The crowd, the noise, and a bunch of weird costumes equaled this reaction:

She immediately wanted to be held. Every trunk we went to, she'd bury her face in my shoulder. Our daughter usually will go to any outstretched arms, but she clung on to me for dear life. Timothy, still indifferent, passed out in the stroller.

Grace eventually let go of me and went with The Wife to go up to trunks. She, with much more patience than me, was able to convince our daughter to let go and start walking up to people to get candy. So as the evening progressed, our little cow got a little bit more confidence and even started to enjoy herself.

I really enjoyed myself too. I was proud watching her waddle up to a trunk in her overstuffed costume, looking up at the person holding all the candy, and sticking out her treat bag. Her overcoming fears and gaining confidence had me beaming.

So, even though Halloween for us started a bit hectic, and we may have forced costumes and picture time on our children, I think the effort was worth it in the end. Through the strange tradition of dressing up and approaching strangers to get candy, our daughter grew.