Happy Halloween!  We had a great one.  Well, technically it is tomorrow, but the ward trunk or treat counts for us, although we will probably dress up Zeke to pass out candy on Monday.  Zeke understood slightly better than last year, but still didn't seem to fully appreciate the magic.  He loved his costume and dressing up, and he loves the skeletons and scary decorations in our neighborhood (he says "hi" to the skeletons, even the creepy ones and has no concept of Halloween as a scary holiday).  But I was expecting super excitement at all the candy and there wasn't really much of that.  He just went from car to car an put candy in his bucket more out of obdience than delight.  Of course he was happy to eat it afterwards!

Because Zeke didn't fully understand Halloween we had a hard time finding out what he wanted to be for Halloween.  We found a Buzz Lightyear costume for $3.00 and went for it.  Of course a few days later Zeke declared that he wanted to be a MOOSE!  Where did that idea come from?  I think the motivator was the deer in my Dad's garage.  But luckily we were able to convince him that Buzz would be pretty cool too.  Trustin spent oodles of time making Buzz's wings, complete with battery powered lights!  Zeke loved it.

Ashlynn was our little baby penguin and naturally she was quite adorable and had no clue what was going on. 

Happy Halloween!

The Progression

So once upon a time... we decided to buy Zeke a twin bed, and we fretted about how the transition would go.  The time had come: a baby was on the way, ready to steal the crib, and Zeke had learned how to escape the crib, head first.  Still, we were nervous.  To our pleasant surprise the transition was remarkably easy.  Zeke loved his big bed and had no trouble sleeping in it (can you see where this is going?).  Not only would he sleep just fine in his bed but he wouldn't even get out of it, ever. After he would wake up he would sit there on his bed and call for us.  Then we'd come up and he'd climb down.

Then one day, it all changed. 

Zeke overheard us telling somebody how incredible it is that he never climbs out of his bed.  The VERY next day, you guessed it.  (Smart kid, eh?). 

See stage one: under the bed

Followed up quickly by stage two: sleeping by the door. He slept here every bedtime/naptime for weeks, we couldn't even open the door to peak at our little sleeper, except by sneaking a camer around the door.

Then we felt guilty because Zeke started saying "no lock door."  The lock disappeared with the admonition that he still needed to stay in his room.  He sort of obeyed.  see stage 3

That lasted a while, but then we hit stage 4: slowly creeping down the hall.  It was quite adorable really, he would bring his pillow, several blankets, his bedtime toys and set up his little bed in the hallway every night. 

I don't have a picture of the next one, but Zeke requested to sleep on the stairs.  Strangely, I said no.  This coupled with the fact that nap and bedtime were all preceded by several hours of playing and running around the hall and opening and closing his door and then finally falling asleep in the hallway  which meant walking on pins and needles from the rest of us and eliminating the possibility of Trustin and I watching movies in the living room after bedtime and premature ends to naptime if the phone rang led to the decision that Stage 2 (lock on the knob and kid sleeping by the door) was a rather lovely stage.  It has returned.