Wah! I want to throw myself on the ground and kick and whine, “where did MY Halloween go?! wah wah!” I love costumes and carving and silliness. One year while dating, Alec and I were both red fuzzy dice and my favorite memory was us walking toward each other in costume from opposite parts of San Francisco. Various commuters saw us at different points of our journey and we got double-takes for several blocks each.
But since having that darn baby, I don’t seem to get Halloween anymore. I’m just pouting in my costume right now lamenting this unfortunate turn of events.
I don’t want to be one of Those Moms who doesn’t let her kid do anything until said child winds up totally rebelling in college by getting into all that nasty stuff just because he couldn’t have sugar or TV in his house growing up. But I have to say, I’m well on my way.
This was Holden’s third Halloween not celebrating Halloween.
I did manage to trick him into his costume for some squinty pictures. Yay. And he got a little modified trick-or-treat action at a preschool party as practice for next year. So that’s something.
In order to prepare for the first big ToT’ing, Rookie Dad ordered us an early pizza so we could eat at 5:30 and hit the streets at 6pm. I made sure that Holden’s costume was a comfy and layerable (but not too fussy) skeleton that he’s already comfortable with (so we wouldn’t have the howling of 2005 or the flat-out refusal of 2006 repeated). I was optimistic. But we scrapped the whole trick-or-treat thing tonight because of his crazy toddler behavior that shouldn’t be rewarded with candy and staying up late.
Crazy behavior included, but was certainly not limited to:
- Loudly proclaiming, “I hate pizza, go away” during our attempts at the early dinner
- Trying to hit his baby brother with a flashlight in the head and yelling “YES YES YES” when I said we don’t hit babies
- Wimpering “Daddy go to work so I will miss you” during the normal dinner time when we’d pretty much given up
- Arguing (for no reason), “I don’t like candy. Milo likes candy. He has teeth.” (ok, that wasn’t bad, just funny… Milo is a toothless 8 month old)
- General kicking and flailing
So I’m sitting here in a Clifford the Big Red Dog suit while I wonder where it all went wrong. 
at least you tried! we went to our playgroup’s halloween party (where my babe was the only one in a homemade costume) and he zonked out after such a stimuli filled afternoon… i sat outside our apartment building willing kids to come by… 10 did. i can’t wait till next year when i wont feel weird actually trick or treating with a baby(at least by then he’ll be able to walk for a bit!)
lauging out loud. since i’ve spent many halloweens with you, i have to say this one was entirely different. we successfully trick or treated and, instead of navigating throngs of drugging SFSU students and drunken gay men, we navigated throngs of parents just like us with preschoolers and big kids in costumes. there were actually lines to get up to each house. it was super fun, but i felt like a different person. one of those “i’m officially a mom” moments.
Wait, you didn’t let your kid go trick-or-treating because he was acting up? Dude, Halloween is once a year. You let it go. He was probably a spazz because of so much excitement. That’s harsh, man, just harsh.