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Halloween has come and gone, and man, do we have a ton of candy. Holy geez. We have a lot of candy.

The reason is as follows, in a round-about way:

Before Claire was born, we knew that she was developing normally and appeared to be quite healthy. And she was. We were expecting to stay in the hospital for one or two nights and come on home, as we did when David was born. Then of course, that plan went right out the window.

So. I am fortunate in my work that I am able to take off as needed for family emergencies and whatnot. That’s one of the benefits of having a family business. We can all sort of pull together to cover for someone when they need it, without rocking the ship too much. So when Claire ended up having to stay in NICU for a week, Kristina and I of course ended up staying in the hospital for that week as well. Then we still had that little period of time when you come home with a new baby where you just sort of have to get back into your rhythm and figure out how to take care of another whole person while making sure your other kiddos aren’t lost in the shuffle.

All in all, I missed about ten days of work. So I have had a lot of stuff to catch up on. The bulk of that has been paperwork: paying bills, getting the books up to date, entering rent payments in the computer and whatnot. The rest of it has been some maintenance issues at the apartments, one of which I had to get finished today.

I was hoping to get home early enough in the afternoon to finish carving our other two pumpkins, run by the store to pick up some candy and some tea-light candles, and perhaps even build a height-restrictive barrier to keep taller kids (i.e. adults) from advancing all the way to our door for candy.

Most of that didn’t happen. I got my work done in reasonable time, but with no time left for pumpkin carving or barricade building. I hit the road for home, hoping to get there in time to load up Kid 1 and Kid 2 to take to various and sundry grandparents’ houses for presentation, and I was on track to do so. I really was doing pretty good on time. So good, in fact, that I got cocky and decided to stop at the Sooper Dooper Kay-Mart for candy and candles.

That was my downfall. (Mental note: Never go to a Sooper Dooper X-Mart on the day of, or the day before, a holiday.) I grabbed a bag full of tea-light candles, about eight or so bags of candy, and hurried up to wait in line at one of the two functional cash registers.

Thirty minutes later I was back in the truck on the way home, and pulled into the driveway at about ten after six, whereupon Kristina told me that the whole Halloween plan was falling apart: David had, as kids will, unexpectedly thrown up all over his cowboy outfit, and was pretty much done for as far as trick-or-treating was concerned, and everything else was yet to be decided. Isabella ditched the Miss America outfit and went for a creepier look. However, before all that happened, Kristina had gone to the store and also bought a few bags of candy for the impending trick-or-treaters. So I think we’ve got like twenty pounds of candy in the house right now.

We called the various grandparents and told them we wouldn’t be coming by after all. I set our three pumpkins out on the porch and lit them up. Kristina took Isabella trick-or-treating up and down the street real quick like, then went to the video store for a movie, and we spent the rest of the evening inducing diabetic comas in giving candy to all kinds of folks in all kinds of costumes, and watching bits and pieces of Meet the Robinsons.

So that passed. Kids are in bed. Hopefully by morning David will be feeling better and Isabella will have reestablished a healthy insulin level in her bloodstream.