Bad mom or quick thinker?

Well, the costume I thought I had for Olivia ended up being Joseph's size - it had been a year since my sister sent it to us and I forgot what size it was. It was a bumble bee and I thought I would just put Joseph in a yellow shirt and tape some black stripes on him and they would match. No such luck so, we were without a costume for Olivia on the day before Halloween (because of course I didn't pull the costume out until then). It's not that we care so much about the holiday. In fact, Olivia didn't even know candy was involved until I accidentally mentioned it and truth is, now that I have kids, I really have no patience for all the needlessly scary stuff. I refuse to go in Wal-greens.
Anyway, I called my neighbor Alice on the fly and sure enough Isaiah had outgrown his cow costume from last year - so we had a bumble bee and a cow. I posted this first picture for two reasons - you can see the tail, cute. (It also had a hood with ears, but it has been strangely warm here and she didn't wear it much.) Also, Grandpa Tony - the bag is a big hit! It is "Baby's" new ride - among the hundreds of other things Olivia has crammed in there. Thank you!

The hat didn't stay on long, so I had to post this

even though it is blurry.

So here is what I learned through the whole Halloween thing. Kids get excited about what you get excited about. They don't have expectations unless we set them - at least for a few years anyway. They don't expect to get a million birthday presents or have a big party. They don't expect huge easter baskets. They don't expect big ticket Christmas presents or new clothes every season or big bags of candy at Halloween...unless we set the expectation. There are a lot of things I want Olivia and Joseph and (whoever else comes along) to long for, to anticipate, to get so excited they can't sleep about - but I am not sure that any of those things above are on the top of that list. Olivia asked all day on Halloween about the candy (after I spilled the beans). Poor kid, we walked around St. Genevieve and Farmington all day and no one gave them candy (and they were stinkin' cute!). Finally, at the end of the day when we were headed back to the hotel, I thought surely the front desk would have some. They did. A tooky little jar of generic candy and hershey's kisses. Olivia picked out a sucker and a hershey's kiss and thought she had hit the jack pot.

I thought when I had kids that the whole parenting thing would just instinctively kick in. It didn't really. This is the hardest thing I have ever done. When to discipline, when not to - for what and how. How to be creative and proactive. Sometimes I feel like I am so desparate for them to learn the things that really matter that I am going to make too big a deal of them (the things that matter) and turn the kids off. There are a ton of things that I always thought would matter that don't and a ton of things that matter a lot that I didn't have a clue about.

I think you have until they are about 3 1/2 or 4 to set expectations before they start cluing in and setting their own. Olivia just turned 3 and time is ticking. I guess the best thing I could ever hope for is that our kids would believe in Jesus as their savior, expect his grace to cover all their sins, long for his return and expect it to be a very big deal. I'll try not to over analyze all the other stuff and put a bit more focus on this for now...and bake them some cookies and keep the candy on the down low as long as I can.