Halloween starts early around here.

We're beginning to prepare for Liam's second Halloween. Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. I love the fall, love all the fall holidays, and it sort of starts off the season for me. I thought I had Halloween pretty wired: lights for the porch, pumpkin and scary witch dishtowels for the kitchen, a paper lantern or two inside, and lots of candy. I have nothing on our neighbors though. They've already got the outside of their house totally decorated: lots of lights, some kind of spooky crepe paper stuff, that fake spider web material, and I'm sure there's more, I didn't check it out completely today because I didn't want to go out into the rain. On Sept. 28 they asked me what Liam was going to be for Halloween. I kid you not, Sept 28. And they had their costumes all figured out (robot, I think, and, I can't remember, chicken, maybe; I'll update).

So, I'm trying to catch up. Today I got our Halloween decorations out of the attic. Tomorrow I'll put up the lights. Earlier in the week I ordered the beginning of Liam's costume: Polar Bear, relying heavily on off-white, on-sale LandsEnd baby fleece pants and top. (They're great. Liam lives in these fleece tops.) Now all we have to figure out is hands, feet, and some kind of fuzzy headgear with ears. No problem. We're also teaching him what a Polar Bear says. He thinks my imitation of a Polar Bear is pretty funny but he does try to imitate it. As of this afternoon if you ask him "what does a Polar Bear say?" he gives an approximation of a growl, "grrrrrr RHOR." Except he does it in this tiny, baby voice. Honestly, you'd think a kid who can scream as loud and as often as Liam does could muster up a little bit more of a Polar Bear noise. Luckily we have 3.5 weeks or so to practice.

For those of you who need a quick refresher: here are 2 pictures of last year's costume: Fruit Bat. First, the single most unflattering photo of Mommy ever, I can't believe I'm putting it on the Internet kind of thing: the "batification" process. (When he came in, we had the "de-batification" process. We really crack ourselves up around here.) Second: the completed costume in motion with Grandpa DM. Last year's costume also relied on LandsEnd baby fleece (brown). Really, it's the best stuff. Note wings are electrical taped to the sleeves. Liam is 4 months old in these photos and we'd been in the house 4.5 months; no curtains, no pictures up yet.