Happy Halloween!

Holidays are reasons to celebrate and while some people grow out of holiday celebrations when they get older, I have yet to reach this grown up benchmark. Why? Holidays give you such a great reason to be a kid again; to remember a time when the only thing that mattered was how many Three Musketeers (yuck!) you could trade for someone else's Snickers bars (Mmm..). (I remember gathering as many Reese's Peanut Butter Cups as I could because in terms of fantasy baseball, this was her MVP, a valuable commodity that she would virtually trade anything.) Halloween is THE kid holiday. A day when you could dress up as ANYTHING and get away with it. Wanna dress up like a fairy killer princess... go ahead! California Raisin... why not?! (My costume around the age of 8.) I don't remember too many years that I didn't dress up for Halloween with the last few years especially being some of my best costumes yet!

And now that we have a baby, we're "all in," as the poker players say. It's as though I've been preparing my whole life for this moment. Every holiday that I've celebrated in my "adult" life (aka without help from my parents) has been practice for what is about to happen in my own parenthood career. My parents gave me a great platform in which to start and now I have to run with it. And let's not leave out that I've picked a great teammate to run with (Big Daddy Mike)!

I've seen it with my nephews; how holidays are made even better when there are kids. This is not to say that you can't fully enjoy holidays sans children... Lord knows I did a great job celebrating to the fullest without child, but there is some kind of wonder and newness that kids bring to everything.

I can't wait to start this holiday season (Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's) and all the rest to come with Mima (don't know where that nickname has come from?) and see holidays through a whole new pair of eyes.