Let's see, we let the boys go around our condo complex by themselves for the first time. (Actually, only one of "the boys" is mine, but there are three 12 year olds who are friends.) I loaded up my own DS's white plastic sword with all kinds of glow sticks so he'd be seen. He found me later and complained his "boot" was falling off. I told him to tie it back on, or take it off and that he had to deal with it. If ya wanna go alone, ya gotta deal, bud.
I took DD with a neighbors daughter, Tasha, who is very kind. Tasha doesn't mind speaking for Katie, my DD. Tash even had me teach her to sign "trick or candy" and "thank you" so she could sign them with Katie. They did their best with that until the bags started getting heavy.
A few of the older ladies handing out candy seemed a little taken aback by Katie's lack of speech, they would ask her questions or try to prompt her to say "trick-or-treat" until I told them about her having autism. I think Tasha and Katie may have gotten a few extra pieces of candy everytime that happened...Katie also did not want to hold out her bag for them to drop the candy into. She wanted to take the candy from their hand then put it into her own bag. Everytime anyone encouraged them to take more than one peice of candy, Katie would only take one. Even when Tasha dropped a handful, Katie stopped, picked up 4 pieces that had fallen and carefully put them back in Tasha's bag. She made me so proud of her.
One of our local police officers drove through the neighborhood with his lights flashing. He was giving out carmel apples, and he gave Tasha and Katie 2 each, because they were so good about saying thank you, which Katie did for him completely unprompted by me! I was stunned in a happy way!
Meanwhile, on the homefront DH was in charge of decorating and passing out the loot. He insisted we hang the rubber chicken in a noose near the front door. I don't think he understood the concept of the nut free bowl I had set out, because most everything from there is gone. He also kept threatening kids with pretzels.
"You want pretzels?"
"No thank you, sir."
"Well, you're getting pretzels anyway!"
"Okay, thank you. Happy Halloween."
"Get back here and take something good!! I was KIDDING. Here's a handful of candy!"
And, one of the last trick-or-treaters was a tiny policeman. His father laughed and laughed at my pumpkin pi jack-o-lantern, the only person to understand it, so that little guy got four handfuls of candy. Not his handfuls either, but my DH's.
A very nice night, I think.
