The above photo was taken last night. It's of our oldest son's Blue Halloween candy pail and his "handy dandy notebook".

Hope everyone had a happy Halloween! Taking two under two trick-or-treating is definitely an, ummmm, experience. The youngest (who went as a "Landshark") just wanted to be held — and the oldest wasn't too sure about things until we actually got out the door and started walking around. Then he acted all like, "You mean I knock on the door and they give me stuff for it? GET OUT!" We ended up hitting about three more additional blocks than planned because he was having so much fun, and he did almost all of it on foot.

He was dressed as "Steve" from Blue's Clues, and even though daddy wasn't so sure early-on that people would "get" the costume, his worries were quickly put to rest as we frequently heard shrieks of, "HI STEVE!" and "A CLUE! A CLUE!" Here's a back-view of his costume. (For comparison's sake, here's a promotional photo of Steve from the show.) He also carried around a "handy dandy notebook" (see photo above), Blue candy pail, and a Blue stuffed animal for good measure.

In case you're interested in enabling the habits of your own little Steve or Joe, this site has excellent Blue's Clues replica shirts for both characters.

After the Trick-or-Treat festivities, mommy and daddy got to sneak out for their first "just the two of us" date since the weekend before our oldest was born on 02.03.04 — right around 21 months ago. Grandma kept the boys and we indulged in food and wine at The Melting Pot. I'd honestly forgotten what it was like to hold an adult dinner-time conversation and eat without also soothing cries, sterilizing everything in sight, cutting up food, digging around for binkies, keeping someone from grabbing at the food trays as they whiz by, holding a bottle with my left hand while eating with a fork in my right..... It really was bliss. But we also didn't make it five minutes into the first course without talking about the boys and missing them. Ahhhh, parenthood.

Grandma got back on a plane this afternoon and I'm incredibly sad to see her go. Besides the fact that when she's here, I actually get to shower when I want to do so — it's honestly just nice having her around. Even though she joked she wasn't going to clean out another thing for fear I'd complain on my website about it (ha!), she actually helped kick-start this household over the weekend in ways she can't possibly imagine. We finally got the toddler bed purchased for the oldest so he can move into his big-boy room and baby brother can move from our room into the nursery. We got the soon-to-be-former computer room cleaned out and ready to be that big-boy room. Mountains of garbage made it out of storage and onto the curb. And all of the Christmas decoration bins are easily accessible for the first time since we moved into this house. There was just no way all of this could be started, much less done, with just four hands. That extra pair to help juggle the kids throughout made all the difference.

Suddenly it was like a lightbulb went off that THIS is how other parents do it. They have.....help. They have babysitting. They have that certain, as the French say, "I don't know what". And that what answers to the name of Grandma.

It wasn't all work though...we took time to play as well! Todd's mom surprised me with an early birthday present and bought the two of us seasonal annual passes to "the happiest place on earth". We went over there on Saturday, so check Flickr for photos if you're so inclined. I wish I could bottle big brother's facial expression when he looked up and saw a two-story "Bear in the Big Blue House" poster for the first time. We'd never see another rainy day in Florida again! And the Kir Royale's over at Epcot during the International Food and Wine Festival made a day on I-4 suddenly bearable.

Well tomorrow I'm flying solo once again so away we go... How can it possibly be NOVEMBER already?!?