Halloweeny

Sofia had a lot of fun this Halloween. We started off with a few snapshots in the winter chill of the crack of dawn to document this year’s costume before the inevitable disheveling of the hair (piece), juice spills on the chest, and other generally sticky-gooie and possibly crunchy additions to the costume that are to be expected.

Later on that morning, Sofia went trick-or-treating with her classmates around the shopping center by her school. It was like a chaotic orchestra of toddlers trying to figure out their parts in a school play. Candy bags were falling on the ground, kids fighting over each other’s bags, costume pieces falling off and getting run over by strollers with stadium seating. One poor little guy cried hysterically from the pure mayhem of it all, and that was before they even made it outside. Sofia, being a veteran to the daycare experience with her well calloused temperament, was generally un-phased by the mayhem. She would stop to inspect each interesting wrapped item she received. Sometimes About 50 times, she lifted up her apple basket in the air as if to acknowledge her fellow lute members with her lute and consequently dumping everything on the ground. Yes I know, the basket was completely impractical and maybe the fact that a lovely napkin and a couple of apples were hot glued to the bottom of the basket was skewing Sofia’s understanding of gravity. But just like fashion, certain costume rules should not be broken. Little Red Riding Hood didn’t carry a plastic bag to grandma’s house! No, she carried a cute little basket.



I never thought I would be this old, holding a basket and saying trick or treat to sales people and I didn’t even have a costume. Meanwhile Sofia was checking out stuffed animals in the store window which were much more interesting than the parade of dressed up children and the free stuff being given out. For me, when I wasn’t actively trick-or-treating, I was herding and pushing children to the trick or treating stage like a sheep dog.



There were several tries to eat candy (that were obviously a choking hazard to small children, hello?...salespeople) with the wrapper on. After demanding to have these spit out onto my ungloved hand and placing them, saliva and all, in my pocket as a future surprise to myself, Sofia quickly adapted and started concentrating on the removal of wrappers. Up until now, this, the removal of wrappers has not been part of her accomplished skill set. At least not the type of skill that sticks. Sometimes there’s the random, ahead of it’s time developmental act that scares me. “No! You’re not supposed to know how to do that yet. It’s only going to make my life harder if you know about this”. When one of these threats to my comfortable way of life happens, she looks at me for confirmation of the wonder that she has accomplished. I just look at her like nothing special or I just look at one of the dogs in a nonchalant type of way. In effect, invalidating the miracle and wiping her mind from the knowledge. Balance is once again restored. However, much to my dismay, as she gets older, she no longer needs me for confirmation of the fact that she’s learned something new. So now, another sad moment in Sofia’s development, she has mastered the unwrapping of ALL types of candy.



So how do you explain to a 2-year-old that she has to wear really uncomfortable stuff and she’s not allowed to take it off, she has to say a magic set of words to strangers and collect meaningless stuff wrapped in foil along with some lame business cards and discount coupons. Then when she figures out that you can eat these things inside the mysterious wrappers and that they are WAY better than snacks and dinner, you have to explain to them that they can’t eat it because 1) They could choke, 2) Chocolate melts and easily gets on your clothes, 3) Sugar candies dissolve with saliva and then become glue for all kinds of disgusting things to stick to on your face and clothes, 4) if you eat too much sugar you turn into the equivalent of a heroine addict, 5) … well you get the idea. Let the crying fest begin.

In the evening we attended the school Halloween party. Thinking back to last year, Ray and I were looking forward to the costume parade with the cute little princesses, fury animals, and what not. Instead, it was more of a free for all with the party game stations which suited Sofia just fine. She quickly joined in the musical chairs by grabbing an extra chair from the side lines and bringing it in. Smart girl, isn’t she. She made quick work finding candies in the rice by throwing handfuls of rice out on the floor. She came up to a game of *** in progress with a boy attempting to do the splits on the mat. She quickly studied him and assumed the splits position on the mat right behind him.

I’m not sure, but I think she won that game. And it was all fun and games until she blasted her forehead into some molding conveniently placed 20 inches above the floor on the wall.


The ride home was not all too pleasant, but after some milk and ibuprofen she was all good again. Only five minutes after arriving home, we get our first trick-or-treater at the door. It’s around six and I’m hoping to make some dinner and eat before we continue on with the Halloween festivities. But as soon as Sofia saw Ray give the children candy, she wanted in on that. The next set of trick-or-treaters came quickly and the next. By the third set, Sofia was out the door with them as if she was leaving us behind to join a gypsy caravan. Obviously there’s no way of convincing her to hang out in the house for a half hour waiting for dinner (a sad excuse for sustenance in her opinion, at this point). So, we leave our candy on the front porch and we go off trick-or-treating.

Practicing “trick or treat” all the way to our next door neighbor’s house, we are excited for her first “real” trick or treat encounter. We get to the door, she knocks with her cute little balled up fist, they open the door and she says nothing but proceeds to just walk right in the house. She passes some candy out from her basket and holds up her basket showing her lute to everyone as it spills out on their floor. Well, a few more trick-or-treating attempts but no “trick or treat” ever came out of her mouth at the door. Oh well, maybe next year.

At Abuelos’ house, she reorganized all the candy of various sizes laid out on the stairs. It has to be all ready to go at their house, since they get power trick-or-treaters about every 3 seconds in masses in numbers that you don’t want to see at your front door. Unfortunately she wasn’t able to trick or treat at Abuelos’ house because she kept saying to me, “I scared” when we got out of the car. It was very cute.