Reed’s second Halloween was certainly more interactive than his first. As you may remember, as a Garden Gnome, he pretty much just sat there for us to take pictures, and Trick-or-Treating was us following the older kids around with Reed in a stroller. This year was our first as parents of a child that got excited about candy.

Reed as been blessed with a fairly round noggin and his bleach blond hair makes him look pretty much bald. He’s a little short and stocky with a pretty calm demeanor… remind you of anyone? Charlie Brown, of course!!

I’ll credit Julie with this costume yet again, but she nailed it… and probably at the perfect age. She found a “Cartoon Charlie” shirt online a few months ago and had to guess at what size he would be come October. Luckily she guessed right. The other trick was finding some black shorts in the Fall, when all the summer clothes were gone… Walmart came to the rescue… in the clearance rack. She then found some little brown converse tennis shoes that rounded out the costume. However, there was something missing that need to make this a “costume” and not just an outfit…. Snoopy!!

I scoured the stores on the afternoon of Halloween, looking for a store that would have a Snoopy doll. Target… no. Walmart…. no. Off to the mall. There were no stores that had Peanuts merch!! Finally I stepped into the Build-A-Bear and asked where I could find a Snoopy doll. Fortunately the lady there had seen some stuff at the Hallmark store just a few shops down. I thought to myself… Hallmark? Probably the last place I would have looked. Lo-and-behold, the store had tons of options! I asked why the scarcity on the Peanuts merch, and the cashier replied, “Hallmark own the rights to Peanuts.” Well… there you go.

Back to Snoopy. I picked out the best option that Reed could possibly carry around in his backpack while he was trick-or-treating around. Reed has never taken an interest in stuffed animals, so this was a long shot, but I figured it would be good for some pictures at the very least. To both of our surprise, Reed latched onto Snoopy when I came home and pulled him out! He immediately carried him around and treated him like is new favorite toy. It was perfect! Score one for Dad.

This was Reed’s first year to trick-or-treat. There are plenty of older kids in our friend group that Reed just had to follow in order to catch on. He caught on pretty quick that all he had to do was hold out his basket and these people would put stuff in it…pretty easy. The hard part was keeping up with all those kids with much longer legs!!

We brought along the wagon as the group of adults moved down the street with the kids. Reed would go to a few houses and then need a rest, as he used the time to also sort through his loot. “Pregnant Peyton Manning” pulled the wagon down the street as “Nolan Ryan” followed “Charlie Brown” up to the front doors.

We had a blast, and Reed did too. It was fun to watch him learn such a big tradition right in front of our eyes as he started grasping what was going on around him.

RB