Lila's first Halloween!

Sadly, Lila had to spend her first Halloween in the NICU due to several issues that arose following her birth. But we didn't let that stop us from celebrating the holiday with her! We dressed John up in his giraffe costume and headed over to the hospital for a visit.

John had only seen Lila once before, and it had been a very short visit. The evening of the day Lila was born, Grandma Kay had escorted him into the NICU to see Mommy, Daddy and Lila, but John was way too excited about all the neat things to look at in the room that he gave his baby sister just a passing glance. A similar thing happened on Halloween when we tried to get John interested in her. I guess toddlers and NICUs just don't mix.

We at least got a few pictures.....in this one, you can see Lila wrapped up in a purple blanket in her crib in the NICU, with Mommy and John beside her.

Daddy got John to sit in one of the lab chairs for about 10 seconds so I could get this photo.

And, by the time I took these next photos, Grandma Bonnie and Grandma Kay had already whisked John out of the NICU to keep him from pulling on the cords of the other patients' beds. Here's Lila in the little Halloween outfit the nurses put on her! (She had a knitted pumpkin hat, too, that we took off.)

Back at home, we got ready to take John trick-or-treating (for the first time!) in Grandma Kay's neighborhood. We figured it would be easiest to take him in his buggy, so we did.

Getting ready to ring the doorbell of his first house.....

At his second house.....

At Jack's house.....Jack had just woken up from a nap, so he wasn't as excited as he normally would be to see his little buddy John.

We only went to four houses on John's first trick-or-treating experience because it was getting really cold out and Mommy was fatigued from having given birth just five days earlier. Back at home, we let John have a lollipop from his bag of spoils.

Mommy and Daddy secretly ate the remaining 5-6 pieces of candy from John's bag. The funny thing was, John never seemed to realize that the items he was collecting at each house were edible! I was amazed. I guess that's one thing he'll definitely understand when he goes trick-or-treating next year. Hopefully he'll also understand next year that he doesn't need to give the people at each house something in return for the candy -- he kept trying to hand people pieces of candy from his bag. He even tried giving Mr. Allemeier the stem from the pumpkin he painted, haha!

Here's a video of John practicing saying "trick-or-treat" after we were done making the rounds. The way he says it makes it sound like "choo-treat."