Aidan's First Halloween went by without much fuss. We did go to a friends house who has their annual Halloween pumpkin carving party - it used to be a bunch of semi intoxicated college friends playing with gords and knives - but these days it's mostly kid chaos. So may kids running around you can't hardly move without stepping on either a small human or a discarded toy.

Aidan was certainly the youngest child at the orange gord fest and, while he wasn't feeling 100% as he was still recovering from his bout with a bug, he certainly made his best effort to fit in and play with the other kids. The problem was that few of the other kids wanted to play with Aidan. Granted, Aidan is at a bit of a disadvantage in that he was the only one in attendance who was not yet able to walk - but he'd crawl around trying to keep up with the other kids as they ran around the house. Aidan would crawl one direction, following some child who had just gone past in a flurry of flying Halloween costume material, then, just as Aidan had reached a half way point, the target child would come flying back the other direction. Aidan would stop, sit up, turn himself around and head back in the new direction of the faster then a speeding bullet ankle biter.

I had to give Aidan credit, he never gave up. Kids would go racing up the wooden stairs, Aidan would slowly follow - One step at a time, making his way up the first few steps before the kids came back down the steps past him. The problem is that Aidan has yet to figure out how to descend the steps he's just crawled up. So he'd stand on the step he's last conquered, hands on the next one, looking around trying to figure out what to do next... Whoosh! up the steps go some more kids and Aidan takes off up the next step in hot pursuit! Until myself or Anya would go grab him and bring him back down the steps; much to Aidan's dismay.

The eldest of the non-adults didn't care to have Aidan hanging around with them as they played with wooden train track segments, creating any number of different track routes for the next 'train of doom' to go flying off of. Aidan kept taking the train engines off the track and putting them in his mouth as soon as they came within hands reach. Heh Heh. Serves those kids right for not wanting to play with Aidan in the first place. But I may be biased.

Aidan was not without costume as some friends had some smaller costumes from holiday's past and brought a tiny tiger outfit with them for Aidan to borrow. There certainly is an advantage to having a child so much later then all of your friends - they all seem to have outfits, costumes, shoes, jackets... all hardy used but much too small for their now walking and talking offspring. There really should be some kind of online children's clothing swap meet website or something - as long as it's not hosted by that evil empire of cash swallowing baby merchandise Babies R Us. So Aidan was a small tiger for Halloween and fit right in with all the other children in their variety of princess, pirate, roundtable knight and other live animal outfits. I can't wait when, after a few years, Aidan the youngest is suddenly bigger then some those who were to busy running around or building train tracks to play with him. It will be interesting to see what he does. Although I did notice that many of the female kids (and adults for that matter) did stop and try and play with Aidan.... that's my boy.