What a difference a year makes. In 2010, Braden didn’t eat much or any of the candy he collected on Halloween (Kristin ate it). This year, candy was all he wanted to eat in the days following Halloween.

Still, we were surprised that he didn’t seem in the mood to go trick-or-treating, despite how much we promoted it to him. On the Friday before Halloween, Brian took Braden to State Street, where several hundred children went business-to-business. It wasn’t until Braden saw other kids dressed up that he finally put his SpongeBob costume on.

On Monday, we went to Monona, and Braden again refused to dress up until he saw other kids in costumes. (Oddly, he loved wearing the costume at home.) Then when we went trick-or-treating, Braden got tired after just a few houses and begged to be driven or carried. Thus, we only stopped by about 6-8 houses.

Kristin did a great job training him to say “trick or treat” and “thank you,” though we had to nudge him a bit due to his shyness. Speaking of shyness, Braden now knows that he’s shy, since we say it so much. When he hides from people, some times he’ll say, “I shy.”

Brian called Braden a candy monster the other day and Braden got upset, screaming “I’m not a monster!”

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Brian dressed up as Duff Man from the cartoon “The Simpsons.” It was cute to hear Braden say, “Daddy dressing up as Duff Man?”

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A few weeks ago, Braden discovered that we store our DVDs in a cabinet by the TV when we pulled out one of his Sesame Street videos. He hasn’t really explored it much, which made us extra surprised by what happened last night. The movie “Elf’ (with Will Farrell) was on TV, and Braden went to the cabinet and pulled out the DVD of “Elf.” We were stunned.

How the heck did Braden recognize the movie from the just the side of the DVD case? We doubt he can read the word “elf.” That kid never ceases to amaze us.

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Braden was half scared, half amused by the lobster Brian ordered for dinner the other day. The amusement came from the fact that he thought the lobster resembled Mr. Krabs, a character from the cartoon “SpongeBob SquarePants.”

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The following situation happened before, but it’s fresh in our minds since it happened last night again: Braden refused to have his face wiped after eating spaghetti, but we did it anyways. He then ran over to his bowl of spaghetti and dunked the bottom half of his face in it to get it messy again. What a funny guy!

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A shout-out goes to Kristin’s cousin Katie, who gave birth to her second daughter (Evelyn) last Friday. Congrats to Katie and Scott!

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