Candy, anyone?

There was one evening last week, that we got our act together faster than usual. And our first trick-or-treaters came a-knocking, just when we were done with our early dinner. These would have been the candy -- Musketeers, Skittles, and gummies -- you'd take back, too, if you came and visited us on that Halloween night!

"I try my best not to eat a lot of it," one mom was quoted as saying over the "Candy Conundrum", in the next day's papers. There were suggestions to be sweet about the whole thing, and donate the candy collected (read: pass on the cavities) to food pantries and shelters, or overseas troops even!

I'm doing what I think a lot of moms do -- dole out a couple of pieces in the first few days, and then slow down some, till eventually it's 'out of sight, out of mind'. Our boys' loot, from just visiting homes on one street closer to our old neighbourhood (that we knew they would not be disappointed), came to about thrice the amount we bought!

But candy aside, the dressing up is normally what little ones look forward to! And to some extent, this time round, it became Ben's night, more than it was for Jon, who until his classmates started talking about it on the day itself, was still undecided if he wanted to go trick-or-treating at all.

Maybe it's because this was already our fourth Halloween, and the excitement might not have been all there. But nothing like one boy -- Ben, the hardworking (and quite the diehard) firefighter -- to get the other enthusiastic, too!

Ben, in an outfit from my sis that came in handy, was going all out for smoke from Halloween displays, if not, every fire-pit homeowners had lit up to keep warm...



Eventually, Jon went as a ninja, picking up from the character in his first book report -- a bit nondescript, but I think it worked! And Jon, not just Ben, had some fun, too!



"Trick or treat?"
"Do you have a joke?"


And this policeman is NOT in costume! But he parked his policecar by the roadside, just so he could be on the sidewalk to give out candy!


Can you tell which one's Harry Potter... how can you be sure?


And these must be the most intricately carved Jack O' lanterns we've come across...


I like it that this year, of what we saw, there weren't that many spooky exhibits around, although the older children would tend to look out for those, but which the younger ones -- when old enough to know fear -- and us parents, would rather avoid, for their sake.



I'm glad, too, that Ben enjoyed himself, playing firefighter, and even venturing forth to tell his own version of "Why did the skunk cross the road?", that we hadn't prepared him for. I was feeling quite bad that as the younger sibling, he's always just being dragged around to his big brother's activities.

Birth Order... and What's Your Approach?
Now if you saw that Time magazine article recently about birth order, you know what research is saying, more and more, that it "really does shape your destiny", just as legions of parents have insisted that the way children turn out depends on when they were born.

Of course, apart from other things, like decisions that we make for ourselves, that play a role in how anyone's life unfolds, I think too, that when parents like us devote a lot of time on the older one, simply because he was there first and our firstborn is our first experience of diaper-changing, parenting, school, etc, there's a tendency for us to be more lax and not be paying as much attention on the younger child when he comes along. Other than, of course, that we aren't as young, or energetic, too!

It's not easy, not at all, and it may not mean spending equal time and resources on all our children. But how do we strike a balance, to help each child reach his potential?