ET Phone Home

So I am already thinking of Halloween this year. A little early, I know. But one, I am a Halloween FREAK. I love it. Let's see, why would I love Halloween?

1. CANDY
2. Get to play dress up as a grown-up
3. CANDY
4. CANDY
5. Can trick small children that your horde of dum-dums are far superior to their stash of fun-size Snickers--CHA-CHING
6. Can frighten said children until they cry and not get hauled to jail
7. Like so many other wonderful things in life, I wasn't allowed to experience it as a kid. This would fall in the XFiles/Simpsons/Disneyworld-I-wasn't-allowed category.
8. CANDY
9. CANDY
10. CANDY!!!

Anyway, the reason I've been thinking about Halloween more than usual lately is because of my daughter. Those of you who were in love with the little extra terrestrial that befriended Elliot & his family, you'll remember their Halloween--one of the funniest parts of the movie. I love his funny little waddle-walk, his funny little voice, his funny little grasp on human vocabulary. Well my daughter is in what we've come to think of as the "E.T. stage." She can walk, and in fact sort of run, but it's definitely a toddler's walk/run. And she has a great grasp on speaking, but it's very parrot-y, and she has an adorable little voice right now that makes me so anxious to hear her in a few years' time. And she has the awkward coordination of, well, an extra terrestrial that is unused to earth's atmosphere. If you think about it, she's only been in this atmosphere for over a year. She was in a womb before that, obviously.

So whenever she starts parroting or running or gets excited and runs screaming, I just want to throw a white sheet over her and pretend I have a little ET friend. I bet she would even sit in a closet full of stuffed animals. So this morning was a major ET moment. I had just gotten her out of bed, and went to change her on the changing table that is getting way to small for her extremely tall toddler body. She starts wiggling and thrashing until I make that "errrrrhhh" buzzer sound to tell her to stop. And as she's heard me say so many times, she starts "be still! be still! be still!" Only from her, it's "BE stiww BE stiww BE stiww!" Classic E. T.

And now I'm having another flashback to the movie. E. T. gets in the fridge and drinks all the beer. While we definitely don't keep beer that low in the fridge for just such a reason, she does climb in the fridge and pull out things she thinks she wants. She has dragged wine bottles out of the bottom and started running. But just a moment ago, just so I could finish this darned blog, she wouldn't stop grabbing my cup of coffee. So...I let her have a teensy tinsy sip. And now I have to go deal with a baby altered by the extremely addictive narcotic, caffeine. So have a great day. I guarantee it won't be as fun as mine.