Maletch's First Halloween! He's OFF and RUNNING....

I know I am late posting Halloween photos, but as I mentioned, I would be going back and filling in "time gaps" BUT THIS is TOO GOOD a STORY not to post anyway. I will be putting this post down where it belongs chronologically later this week.

We started off our Halloween fun by taking Maletch to a Halloween Festival in Yucaipa. It was very fun: there were lots of games, TONS of rides (including a ATV Train and one where you could catapult SUPER high in the air with bungie cords- very scary looking), a HUGE petting zoo with TONS of animals, awesome shopping in their store full of unique things, and it had really cute scenery (even a several acre ‘Corn Maze’ you could walk through if you wanted to) and of course they had a pumpkin patch.
Although Maletch was only almost 8 months old and a little too young (and too small) to ride most of the rides, he seemed very eager to! He was interested in EVERYTHING and I was tempted to take him on a few rides, but we ran short on time by that point and had to leave. So we plan to take him to their next festival because they have others throughout the year. We had a great time looking at all the cool stuff, shopping and walking around.
We came home and put him in his Zebra costume which Grandma Pollard sent him and I just thought was too ADORABLE! It had a maine (of hair) down the back of the head and back, and a long tail, and cute ears that 'stuck up'. I couldn't wait to see him in it- cuz I knew it would be so cute on him!
The costume even came with a little 'treat bag,' which when you see the photos of him “pushing the Lion,"- THAT- is what is sticking out of his mouth, LOL! He carried it by the strap in his mouth, so he could have his hands free! He is innovative! He cracks me up!
Unfortunately, since it was a one piece suit with 'feet things' in them, there wasn't much I could do as far as hemming them or cuffing them, and I knew that we would probably have a "fit problem" in the legs- as we do with ALL of his pants. And we did, LOL, poor Maletch and his short legs- it fit him everywhere else, but the leg length and they were several inches too long. That aggravated him because he kept tripping on the legs and ‘footie things’, so he got mad and wanted it off- LOL! So I didn't have much time to take photos but I did manage to get a few!
I threw some random photos in a slideshow below (for now) so you can see the photos, I will edit it a little later. You will see in some of the photos that he grabbed the phone and started making calls, LOL- I think he was trying to call for HELP to get him out of that thing!

As soon as I 'freed him' from his costume, he was so happy and started running around with his "Lion" as usual and pushing it sideways and THEN..... he LET GO and took his FIRST STEPS that night! YAY Maletch!! So Halloween became a VERY special night at our house because our little man started walking! He started out with 3 steps, and kept increasing it. He had incredible balance even at 8 months, and didn't have that many falls.
Of course the "spills" he did take were really hard ones because he started running the same night (Halloween). It made me nervous that he was RUNNING before he perfected walking- but he liked to go FAST! And he still does- holy moly! You should see him now- sheesh! In his first month walking (or should I say running), he fell on the corner of the TV cabinet and his tooth cut his lip which looked SO painful, it was swollen and BLEEDING- a stream of blood ran down his chin! He was so tough and didn’t even cry- I did though- LOL! Thankfully, he was a total PRO within a month, he could turn on a dime, and no matter how fast he was going he would never lose his balance! Praise God we have had no more injuries! He started off crawling half of the time and walking half of the time, and as he got better at it- he 'phased out' the crawling all together! He quickly got to a point that he REFUSED to crawl- which was funny- I guess he thought he was 'too grown' for that? The funny part was that he has a lot of big trucks and things that require you to push them on your hands and knees- well he wouldn't do that- so 'Hercules' over here- would pick up these huge trucks and CARRY them around the room! :)