Halloween….such a fun holiday!  A time to get dressed up and eat candy, just for the heck of it.  Ashley went trick-or-treating this year, a far cry from what she did last year when she was only 2 weeks old.  Which was basically eat and sleep.  So it was fun to go out with her and show off our lil’ pumpkin to the neighbors!

We started off our Halloween weekend with a “bang”.  Saturday night we went to our friend Brody’s first birthday party.  His actual birthday is on Halloween.  How cool is that?!  So we were having a good time, until Ashley fell on his activity table.  Still not sure what happened.  She was just standing there playing, and then fell forward on it.  It wasn’t anything unusual, so I told her to shake it off and continue playing.  I try not to react to her falls because I have found that 99.9% of the time she is just fine, and she will only react if I react to it.  I’m trying to teach her to dust herself off and move on, so to speak.  Anyway, we didn’t think anything of it until Jan (Brody’s mom) saw that there was blood on Ashley’s hand.  That’s when we noticed that her mouth was bleeding!  Okay, now was the time to PANIC!  Holy moly.  Ashley has never bled before (except for that time when Van nipped her finger when he was cutting her nails, but that was a long time ago).  And now the guilt sank in.  I just told my child to “shake it off” when come to find out, she had busted her lip!  Great.  Good job Mom!

Luckily, there were veteran mom’s there that helped out.  Ashley kept messing with it (duh, because it hurt).  And the more we tried to inspect it, the more it bled and the more she cried.  It bled a lot!  Of course, she didn’t want anyone messing with it and she wouldn’t let me hold ice to it.  Luckily, her front teeth weren’t lose.  Thank goodness!  From what we could tell, it was that flap of skin that holds your upper lip to your gums that was cut.  So we left the party early and brought her home.  She was such a trooper!  I sat in the back with her and kept the interior light on so she could see I was there.  Distracted her with all the goodies Jan put in her goodie bag from the party.  When we got home, the bleeding had stopped but her lip was a little swollen.  So we gave her some Infant Tylenol (Walgreens brand, NOT the recalled stuff) and some Oreo ice cream.  I think the Oreo ice cream was more of a pain reliever than the Tylenol.  She loved it and kept asking for more!  Whenever she wants more of something, she holds her hands up high in the air.  It’s really cute!

When she woke up on Sunday, she was back to her usual happy self.  Eating and drinking just fine.  And the swelling was gone.  Just in time for trick-or-treating

Since our pumpkin patch pictures didn’t turn out too swell from Hillridge, I thought I would make my own pumpkin patch.  So I gathered our pumpkins on the back deck and took some pictures of her.  Oh, and that little pumpkin she is holding with her name on it was made by Jan.  That was one of her goodies from Brody’s party.  Isn’t it cute?  Then we ate an early dinner and headed out with our lil’ pumpkin to go trick-or-treating.   She wasn’t too thrilled to put on the pumpkin outfit because it was a little tight fitting (note to self – do not buy Halloween outfit in September because she will outgrow it before Halloween gets here!).  But once she got in her wagon, she was fine.  So we went to a few neighbors’ houses before it got dark.  And once we got home, she greated the trick-or-treaters that came to our door.  Daddy even let her have a try at some Smarties.  After all, it is her candy!