Halloween Madness

My goodness, who knew that Halloween could be so exhausting? I've been through a few of these holidays over the past five years, but apparently, I wasn't prepared. I don't mean the costumes -- those I had taken care of, or enough that I didn't have much to do the day before Halloween. Let's see, Tuesday had me making a fancy gold "R" bling necklace for my Brazilian soccer star, gluing Cinderella medallions on a pair of cloppy shoes, cutting the feet out of a 9-months monkey costume, so it would fit my 13-month-old, making a pirate flag...and a few other things I can't remember.

But that's not what did me in. What did me in was the Halloween parties at school, the over-the-top excitement in anticipation of trick-or-treating, the scheduling -- who is taking whom where and when do they need to be picked up -- the trick-or-treating, and finally, attempting to combat the sugar high of four hyped-up, strung-out candy junkies. Oh, and then being there to pick up the pieces when the high ended and the four little junkies crashed in various piles around the house. One little junkie just stood in the bathroom openly weeping because he was too tired to brush his sugar-crusted teeth.

My well-trained children have been handing over all of the Snickers bars to their mother, proof that I must be doing something right!

And here they are:


We start with Ronaldinho, perhaps the greatest soccer player in the world. He's a Brazilian futbol celebrity, not, as this picture might suggest, a 10 year old named Tiffany from Connecticut:



Next, we have Jack Sparrow, albeit not the one from the Disney store (or whatever company makes it). Cenzo told everyone he was dressing up as Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Carribean. He got suspicious when his best buddy at school came to the parade in the "official" Jack Sparrow get-up. He mulled that over for a few minutes, until his buddy handed over some extra beard for Cenzo to tape to his face. It's amazing what a little facial hair will do for a young boy. Or maybe any male, actually.


Next, we have Cinderella. This girl is a stud. Not only does she look fabulous, she wore shoes that rubbed the skin off of two of her toes, and yet, she refused to take them off. After all, they did have Cinderella medallions on them: she was not about to abandon them. She only stopped trick-or-treating because her bucket got too heavy, not because her toes were bleeding or anything.



And finally, little ladybug. Most of the day, she carried her costume with her, so stroller-treating was a step in the right direction.



No photo of the monkey. We had a diaper malfunction which rendered the costume definitely un-photograph-able. I came this close to cutting the damn thing off of the child, rather than wrangle with what she did to it. Gross.

At the end of the evening, I was so tired I felt like I'd been hit by a mack truck. Next year, I'm trick-or-treating with a flask. Why should the kids have all the fun?