Rainy Day Blues

The weather for the past five days has been absolutely miserable.  At first I was thankful for the rain, happy for the excuse to curl up under the electric blanket with a good book. After a few days of hibernating, the grey skies paired with a steady cold rain simply became depressing.

Unable to play outside, Robby split his time between playing XBox games, watching cartoons and working with his Legos. After a few days even he became bored and depressed! I've learned that Robby becoming bored often becomes an invitation for his alter ego, Robby Rotten, to visit. Wanting to avoid seeing his arch nemesis, I knew that I had to come up with a fun indoor activity. 

Hoping to break the dreary day blues, I decided it was the perfect occasion to completely spookify our house for Halloween.  Robby and I went into the storage garage and dug out our boxes of Halloween decorations. (I realized when we were making the third trip up the stairs that we have an obscene amount of decorations!) Needless to say, Robby was in his element surrounded by glitter covered pumpkins and ghosts. Charlie cat, who sat in the middle of the glitter ghost box, was not nearly as delighted. I'm fairly certain that he is going to have glitter stuck to his tail until Valentine's Day.

Wanting to set the holiday mood, I started streaming Nightmare Before Christmas. This was Robby's first exposure to the movie, and I have to say that he was mesmerized. I thought we would decorate during the movie, but Robby had other ideas. He sat spell-bound on the sofa and attentively watched the entire movie. We didn't begin to decorate after the credits rolled.

Robby had a great time hanging the pumpkins, ghosts and skeletons. Opting to utilize every decoration in the boxes, our house is now festive from four feet high and below.  He worked diligently for three hours, transforming our living room and dining room into a creepy haunted house. The cobwebs, which have accumulated in just about every corner, now actually fit a theme and aren't a reminder of my lapse in housekeeping.  Although I'm sure that he won't want to invest nearly as much energy when it is time for the decorations to be removed, he was happy for the activity and I was glad to see him engaged and giggling.

Hopefully the sun will begin to peak through the clouds today and break our moods. Even if the weather doesn't cooperate, our moods have been bolstered. After all, it is hard to be surrounded by happy ghosts and pumpkins and not smile!