Halloween.

Come and gone.

And I hate to admit, I was dreading it.

The weekend leading up to Halloween, had me feeling all the things.  (Mostly anxiety.)  I scrolled through my social media and saw everyone having the BEST HALLOWEEN WEEKEND EVERRRR for like 4 days straight. And here I was, barely able process how I was going to bring up the idea of Halloween to Stevie — because I figured the costume, the decorating, the trick-or-treating, the candy, or all of the above would lead to tantrums and meltdowns in some way.

On Sunday night, I complained to my friends how hard it was to have a kid who doesn’t like to do these fun things.  We can’t bake pumpkin cookies or carve pumpkins or simply enjoy a party.  And they gave me some solid advice:  If you like doing those things, just do them for you.

I thought about that for a minute and blurted out “Well, I don’t actually like doing any of those things that much.” And we laughed, because what?  What am I complaining about again?

I quickly realized that I just want Stevie to like doing those things because that’s what kids are supposed to do. I want him to have good childhood memories like I have. I want the holidays to be exciting.  I want to see these things through a child’s eyes again.  And I put all these expectations on him to have fun, because I want him to be normal (and I know that sounds like a terrible thing to say, and I know it’s not PC, and I know that there is no normal, and I know normal is boring.  I know I know I know all those things.  But sometimes being different is tiring.  So I’m saying it.)  I want him to feel normal sometimes.

But here’s the thing.  If he doesn’t like doing that stuff… and I don’t like doing that stuff… and we all know dad doesn’t like doing that stuff.  I mean, what am I even upset about?  Maybe I should consider myself lucky.  I’m kinda being let off the hook with this one — no pressure to create the perfect Halloween (for now).  I know a few moms who would take that.

So.  Expectations lowered.

And, as luck would have it, all my fretting was for no good reason.  Stevie had a great Halloween.  In fact, probably the best Halloween everrrr!  He was excited to go to school and be in the parade.  He was patient as we waited for dad to get home so we could go trick-or-treating.  He ran from house to house.  He was pumped that other people were out and about in the neighborhood. He was thrilled to go visit friends.  He showed off his muscles OFTEN.  He was greedy as could be.

And doesn’t all of that sound so perfectly normal??  I think so too.