Happy Halloween! (we'll get to the middle term in short order)
Sorry its been awhile. Louise has certainly been the journeyman on this blog voyage, plugging away at inciteful & funny excerpts from our busy San Diego lives. Frankly, I couldn't do any better! She does a way better job of capturing Teia's 3-year lilt & phraseology than this die-cast engineer (verbal cues aren't my strong point; more on that later)
Halloween, like the rest of our holidays, deadlines, and obligations, lurched up to us without warning. Flashback to last year: Kai calmly strutting through the neighborhood, proudly boasting of his Seaworld Skytower costume. Teia zooming off into the darkness in our Tigger costumer. Mom trying not to trip on her hula costume in hot pursuit, or Dad trying not to run into a tree while wearing the cheapest (or most economical) ghost costume in the Pacific Southwest. At the end of a four-day Red 40/Blue 3/Yellow 5-fueled treat binge, we asked our wide-eyed little insomniacs what they would like to be NEXT Halloween. Kai: a trolley! Teia: no response (she wore the Tigger suit on & off for the next 4 months, however).
Fast-forward 11.74 months: Kai, what do you want to be for Halloween? Kai: A trolley! Teia: A kitty! No, a PINK kitty! We suspected the kitty thing, so Uncle Mike (my brother) had dropped off some black ears for Teia during an earlier trip (Thanks Mike! Or rather, thanks Eva, the previous owner of the kitty ears).
But black ears are NOT what pink kitty's wear, no sir/ma'am. Pink kitty's wear pink ears. Enter Grandma Barb, Master Sewer. In 2 days, she sewed pink cloth over the black ears and fabricated a pink tail (complete with stuffing) and attached to some pink sweatpants.
Now to the trolley. We should consider ourselves lucky that our little man has such unique ideas for Halloween costumes. And if we weren't responsible for bringing them to fruition, we most definitely WOULD feel lucky. But with 6 days to "TOT" time, I wasn't feeling quite so lucky. In fact, I was steeling myself for the damp eyes & quavering voice of "But....I ....wanted to be....a TROLLEY!" when presented with some generic superhero mast & plastic chest shield.
Never fail, L and I whipped up some ideas. Trolleys are essentially rectangular prisms (so says Team Umizoomie, who I blame for keeping this Trolley idea alive). Louise printed out some different trolleys and Kai picked the MTS San Diego Trolley. So start with a storage box, cut out a hole for the head & arms and voila! A trolley!
Except that its brown and has shipping labels on it. So off to Michaels we trudged (on the first rainy day in like 8 months, kinda ominous portent...). I was never one to while away an afternoon in Michaels but Louise was locked-on and got all the goods plus 3 picture frames, 2 stocking stuffers, and an extra quart of glue on-special. Impressive! Back home, I painted the outside, drew up some doors & windows, cut-out the wheels and used a white paint pen to draw in the MTS symbol. Amazing what a cup of coffee at 9pm the night before first wearing will do to get a kid's costume out the door.
Kai and Teia both got to wear their costumes at a couple outings before the big night. The looks of pride & excitement were quite electric! Come Halloween, the excitement was bubbling over into near-hysterics. Teia started asking if it was dark enough BEFORE her nap (~2pm-ish). Louise realized a good strategy to get a nap was to warn T to sleep else no Halloween. Teia may not have slept, but she WAS quite for 2 hours! Kid's no dummy. As soon as I got home, the bombardment of "Time to go trick or tweating?" began. We managed to distract our sugar-hungry hellions long enough for some kind of dinner, took some pictures, then pushed out the door for the big candy search! While waiting, they warmed up by taking candy out of our house's container, already starting the night with a good haul!
Since we would be away from the house for 30-45 min, we left a bowl of candy at the front with a sign to "Please take 2!" No sooner had we gone across the street for our first treats did a beat-up old sedan swoop in front of our house, out jumps a teen in a mask, scoops up all the candy in the bowl, dives into the sedan, and peels off down the street! Probably wasted $2 in gas to snag $4 of candy. On one hand, I was pissed that someone stole the candy. On the other, I had to admire the brazenness of it all. So THAT's how petty thieves do their thing - cruise around and jump on every opportunity!
Both kids could hardly slow down enough to say "Trick or Tweat" at first. Even the usually reserved Kai was striking his little arms into the bowls to fish out the goods. We had to help him put the candy into his pumpkin because of the costume but at first he wouldn't let go - I think he thought we were taking the candy from him for good). Teia was also a little suspicisous- she 'allowed' Louise to carry her pumpkin but would kept vice-grips on 2-3 pieces of candy in her paws...just in case Mommy might bolt down the street, cackling with delight over stealing some candy from her own 2 kids!
After about a dozen houses, Kitty and Trolley started to run out of steam. We trudged back to the house, re-stocked the bowl, and gave everyone one last treat for the night. By this time, its almost 7pm, about their bedtime, and they've already had about a dozen pieces of candy each. Now the middle term in the subject line comes to mind - 2 little kids alternating between hysterical crying, flying across the room, screaming with laughter, repeat every 5 seconds before we can shoe-horn each of them into their PJs, squirt some toothpaste into their mouths, and shoulder them into their beds. Every nutritional rule we had kept over the last year had been broken, shattered, and ground into paste (then baked & broken again). Who knew kids could be so susceptible to sugar rushes? (I guess growing up, I ate so much sugar I just kept that high constant all day).
The house was now a wreck, the wails of crying still rung in our ears, but all in all it was still a good night!
Unfortunately, the sugar-crash continued for the next few days, further reinforcing our middle term above. In fact, we may very well have crossed the line to becoming THOSE parents. You know, the ones that don't "do" Halloween. Its a scary thought but if we plan it right, we might be able to convince our kids that Halloween was a once in a lifetime event, like Haley's comet, then plan all future vacations in & around 31 Oct.
