Liam the Lion Man and O-Bear rolled into town this Halloween and basically slayed it. I’d say our family won Halloween. Liam went as a lion, Owen as a bear, I went as a tiger and Luke was our zookeeper.

 

 

I definitely fell into the “new mom, first Halloween, over-priced costume trap” but how could I not? In order to get full use out of the boys’ costumes on Halloween morning I dressed them up in their costumes for our morning walk to the Henry to get coffee and breakfast. They received their requisite “ooohs” and “ahhs” and I just knew Halloween was going to be a success and Luke just knew I was on my way to being the mayor of crazy town.

Halloween night we had all of Luke’s family over for dinner and trick or treating. There are 7 grandkids aged 4 and under on his side so we were a little skeptical about how trick or treating would turn out. It would either be a sugar fueld never ending adventure or everyone would have complete meltdowns one house in. Luckily, everyone had a blast and our neighborhood was awesome for trick or treating. Hopefully, we can make it a tradition to get all of the cousins together for trick or treating!

 

Halloween also somewhat marks us living in our new house for a year, can you believe that? Last year, Luke and I were so excited for Halloween we sat on our front porch in our Adirondack chairs (standard arcadia sitting) waiting for over an hour for trick or treaters to show up. We had no idea when it would start but we definitely got a jump on happy hour and by the time people started showing up we were already two bottles of wine in! Then our neighbors started showing up and introducing themselves and I was basically loopy with full on wine lips. I make great first impressions. Fast forward a year and we have twins and our neighbors directly across the street from us have a baby boy, Camden, who was born a week after the twins – how cool is that? And it turns out Camden and his parents were tigers for Halloween so we had the cutest lion and tiger and bear (oh my) in Arcadia! We love our neighborhood so much. It is the perfect mix of young families and veterans who have lived on the street since the houses were built in the 1950’s. Everyone genuinely looks out for each other and are invested in bringing the community feeling to our little piece of Arcadia-peasant. So we’re not going anywhere anytime soon…well unless Luke gives me another set of twins and we simply run out of space!

 

The boys turned 5 months on 10/29 and are doing what they’re supposed to be doing according to those online progress checklists that could drive a mom crazy. They’re still working on holding their heads up 100% of the time but man it’s pretty exhausting. Especially for Owen who’s head is in the 90 percentile and the rest of his body in the 60^th. He’s so long, skinny and big headed that he kind of flails all over the place trying to do cool things with his body all the while Liam lays contently on the floor watching for the action to happen. Owen tries so many things that when something cool does happen he has no idea how he did it and can’t usually repeat the new cool trick ,but Liam who’s been watching, pulls the trick off with ease and then Owen is in amazement and usually passes out from exhaustion. I’ve really been trying to get them to engage in each other more but it’s hard because they are always haphazardly flinging body parts in every direction that when I get them too close to each other someone usually gets poked in the eye and then the world ends. However, I have gotten some pretty cute moments too where they lock eyes and babble to each other and I die of cuteness. So it’s all worth it in the end. Sometimes love hurts you know?