Halloween

We survived our 1st Halloween on the ketogenic diet - yahoo!  This is one of the days I have been dreading since we started on diet therapy in May.  I had received several ideas on how to deal with Halloween with a child on the ketogenic diet, but the one we decided to go with was to pay Joshua a quarter for every piece of candy he received and then let him buy a toy with that money.  I wanted to let Joshua still enjoy dressing up and trick-or-treating for Halloween even though he could not eat the candy.  He already has to miss out on so many things, I didn't want him to miss out on this too. 

We also had an appt. with his neurologist this day at 3:00 so it was quite a hectic night as we didn't get home until 5:30 and then we had to feed him and give him his meds before we went out.  Poor Cole was dying to leave so Chip took him out for a little while just the two of them and then we all went out together once Joshua was done eating and taking his meds.  My Mom was nice enough to come to the hospital with us to help us at the appt. and then she came back to the house and handed out candy while we went trick or treating.  We were not out with Joshua for very long because he tired out after a little while, but he had a great time while he was out.  He loved going up to the houses and yelling "trick or treat".  To my amazement he did not try to eat any candy while we were trick-or-treating and when we got home Chip counted out his candy and paid him $22 for all his candy.  He did make a comment that he didn't want money, but wanted to eat his candy, but we distracted him after that and it seemed to be the end of it.  The next day I took all the candy to work to get it out of the house. 

One of the best parts of all of this was that Cole decided getting paid for his candy was a pretty sweet deal and asked if he could also get paid for his candy.  I said sure - better for him than to eat all his candy anyway, especially since he is prone to cavities.  Cole ended up earning $23 after he ate 3 pieces of candy.  I was so impressed that he only wanted to eat 3 pieces and sold the rest.  The day after Halloween we took the boys to Target to spend their money and Cole got a set of Legos he has been wanting and Joshua got a Lightening McQueen toy.  They were both so excited to buy their toys with their money. 

Halloween ended up being a lot easier than I thought it would be and gives me more confidence to deal with Thanksgiving and Christmas coming up soon.  I hope everyone else had a wonderful Halloween!

Here are some pics of the boys.  Joshua is Thomas the Train and Cole is Luigi.

Chip and the boys

My Mom (Nana) w/ the boys

They want to leave and are tired of me taking pictures