I have two unrelated questions.
Instead of Halloween candy are we those weird people if we hand out That’s-It fruit bars instead? We don’t have candy in our house and this would prevent us from a separate shopping trip.
Does anyone have suggestions on mittens or other ways to keep an about two-year-old‘s hands warm in the winter?
You are those weird people. Own it!
Fruit bars=good
One size fits all mitts or merino one size for as long as possible. Boiled wool if it’s colder, dry, but no wind. Fleece is less flexible than you’d think. Kombi does great mitts when it’s cold. Reima overmitts feel great and flexible but I clearly bought too big (the rain mitts). I bet their mitts are good but be warned Reima gear is often designed for up to -5/10C and even then sometimes needs layering. I think a few pieces are for colder but it isn’t their standard.
Like our reima suit is designed to layer over boiled wool at that temp. Osh Kosh is Canadian and affordable. Deux par deux is Canadian and amazing - thank you former coworker’s rich cokehead ex husband for that hand me down!
IDK, 2 year olds start to have preferences and you might find that he likes rainbow ones or dinosaur ones or whatever.
For a whole year my two-year-old refused all mittens until:
For our climate/routines, waterproof isn’t super important — synthetic/wool keep his hands warm enough and give him more dexterity to play with wet pinecones, leaves, etc. and if the core is warm enough, hands matter less.
Waterproof CAN be important here but honestly we’ve had the best luck having a bunch of pairs of head brand mittens from Costco and just swapping when they get wet. Until this last year she wouldn’t tolerate the Reima Kura shell gloves that are the gold standard for her forest school here.
LOL ravioli doesn’t let me put any gloves on him. If I get them on, he takes them off. Little boy would rather get frostbite. Maybe this year will be different? Will try sock propaganda
Yes 1.5-2.5 was zero glove success. Honestly it didn’t improve a ton until the peer pressure of forest school just before 3 
Last winter B2 opted for actual socks over mittens. Which was fine.
We are giving out pirates booty. My kids and I appreciate things that aren’t straight candy!
For mittens we usually get nice warm ones. Put mittens on THEN the coat. It helps keep the mittens in place some with the tiny hands.
Snowstoppers brand extended cuff, put on first and then coat over the top. I even struggled getting them off of her without taking the coat off.
We bought a costco box of halloween gummies to pass out instead of candy. It might not be any healthier but it’s GF 
Now I feel even better! That’s-It bars are GF! Wahoooo!
This isn’t really a health choice but a lazy one. We got a bag of Halloween candy that lasted 3-4 years and if we just do the fruit bars I don’t need to leave my house.
We do have sweets and junk food in the house, for the record. I just love extra bitter bougie dark chocolate as my vice and when we want candy both of our offices always have a bowl out.
We only ever get at most 7-10 trick or treaters 
I’ll look into some of these glove options!!! Thanks for sharing!
Cuckoo turned 2 at the end of July and the time change is coming. She generally sleeps until a reasonable hour but not always.
At what age do you introduce some kind of stay-in-bed device, and what are your favorites? Do any of them actually work? I used to own an owl that lit up but BB kept trying to take it apart.
We use the hatch because I can control it from my phone so for the first weeks/months I could turn on the light whenever I went in to reinforce the concept and then we began to set it to a desired time.
I think we got it around 2 but I’ll check photo evidence…
We use the hatch and we introduced it around 3 I think? Def knew it wouldn’t have succeeded before that lol, but Latte is particularly intense.
We used something from Target that turned green. In theory it kinda worked but he would make enough noise in his room that we’d wake up anyway (we share a wall). Kiddo did try to take it apart but was very sad at the idea of it being removed from his room because it was broken so maybe mention that up front. I don’t remember what age we got it.
Potty training kinda ruined it later on because he’d have to leave his room to go pee and then would wander to the living room. You’ve got plenty of time till then though.
Pipsqueak was 2.5 when we got it. She is a super rule follower but I’m not sure how much earlier it would have worked.
Also, I like the hatch better than alternatives because you can turn on the light at 1% when they are technically allowed to wake up, and then blast it to 30 or 70% when you actually need to wake them up. Pipsqueak is grumpy in the morning like I am so a non-hunan wakeup helps everyone.
You all live such different lives than me
I suggest getting a baby with the opposite body clock so you can have the worst of both worlds.