Happy Halloween everyone!  It has been a busy week, with no less than 4 costumed events!  Owen was a very good sport but I think we will all appreciate a nice quiet weekend at home.

We really enjoy doing a family costume.  In fact I dread the day when Owen can tell me that he doesn’t want to dress up with us and wants to pick his own costume.  I think I might cry.  Hopefully he is still cool with it next year because I am already working out my plans!  This year we all went as characters from Alice In Wonderland.  My sister and her family also got into the group costume with us so we made a pretty impressive group.

I end up putting a lot of work into Owen’s costumes.  He has some sensory processing issues and that makes it tough to just buy something at the store (this is also why sometimes you see photos of Owen in his glasses and sometimes you don’t, he should wear them all the time but he doesn’t like to).  If you don’t know what that means, don’t worry, I didn’t either until Owen was about 10 months old.  It means that his brain processes information a little differently than a typical brain and some things cause him to become upset.  In fact a lot of people have difficulty with some things, maybe you know some who doesn’t like the have the tags in their shirts or who doesn’t like loud places (like me).  Owen doesn’t like things on his head (no masks), or gloves (but he still needs to be warm), he doesn’t like velcro touching his skin and some other things that just make buying a costume too hard.

Last year we went as pirates and Owen was our adorable little parrot.  I managed to put together a costume that used a hooded sweatshirt as the base.  I am not sure if he even knew he was wearing a costume!

This year we decided that Owen would be the Chesire Cat.  I bought some warm striped fleece pajamas as my starting point.  Next I sewed a tail and cat ears from felt.  the hardest part was making the tail and ears striped, that took a long time!  Next I sewed the cat ears to a hood I cut from an old sweatshirt. I also sewed velcro dots onto the tail and back of the pajamas so he wouldn’t have to sit on the tail in his car seat.  None of the velcro touched his skin so that was fine.

I ended up making lots of changes along the way.  On Friday night he didn’t want to wear the hood, which means the cat ears I sewed onto the hood weren’t obvious to people.  Lots of people at the Halloween party kept asking what he was supposed to be.  Many people didn’t really know us or Owen so they didn’t know that he doesn’t talk yet.  They seemed to think he was rude or asked if he is shy.  I know people don’t know any better but after the 10th time I was frustrated and I didn’t want to go through that again.

The next day we decided that I could make a Chesire Cat smile and eyes out of felt and add it to his costume.  Thanks to Owen’s sensory issues, painting a big smile on his face just wasn’t an option.  So I cut out eyes and a smile using more felt and sewed them onto the front of his costume. I didn’t want to do it at first but I ended up really liking how it turned out.

Now we were ready for our trip to the local Historical Society, they do a really fun trick or treat at night.  You get to walk all over the grounds and the covered bridge.  In each building there are volunteers teaching you about the history of the area.  It’s a great event.  Unfortunately we nearly lost Owen’s tail in the woods.  I did not want to have to sew another one and add more stripes!  The next day I sewed the tail to the back of the costume and it turned out Owen wasn’t bothered by that at all.

Sunday was another great day, the weather was beautiful and we went to the local amusement park for their Halloween themed event.  Owen loves the park and gets so excited to be there.  This is the first year we let him go on the kiddy rides that adults can’t get on too.  I was so nervous at the start of summer but he caught right on and by now he is a total thrill seeker!

They also have trick or treating in the park.  It is held in Storybook Forest and last year, Owen could not have cared less about it.  But my sister’s family was along and she wanted to take her kids so we decided to give it a try.  It was so much fun.

Owen was actually excited to go into the buildings and explore, he even sat in one of the desks at the little school house.  It was adorable!  I was able to convince him to carry his trick or treat bag and he looked so cute.

One thing about having a child with special needs is that it can feel like you miss out on things that other families get to do.  Sometimes we still try to do these activities but usually it just shows how behind Owen is in some areas.  My nephew caught right on to trick or treat, happily trotting along and dropping candy into his bag at each stop.  Not Owen though, as usual, he did things his own way.

This time, I didn’t feel as bad as I usually do when Owen doesn’t understand what is expected of him.  Frankly, it. was. hilarious.  My little guy would go running up to each character handing out candy with his bag flapping behind him.  The person would hand him candy since he didn’t offer his bag to put the candy in.  He would stand there and study the candy in his hand, look at the person, look at the basket they had taken the candy out of and walk right up and drop the candy back into the basket.  The look on their faces was priceless.  Sometimes they would try to hand him candy a second time with the same exact outcome or they would hand it to me to put in his bag, some of them just gave up and let us go on our way without any candy, which was fine.  My favorite was Little Red Riding Hood.  I think she believed we were trying to play a trick on her!

We wrapped up our celebrating with the costume contest at the chiropractor’s office (I really hope we won) and Owen’s preschool party.  I will write all about the party in my next post.

And for good measure a photo of my little niece, “Alice” and my nephew “The White Rabbit”.  You might notice he is missing from our group photo…  I guess he was late for a very important date.

I hope you all have a happy Halloween!