Halloween 2016

Halloween with young kids can be really fun. It can also be very frustrating. Monday night definitely started on the frustrating side. (I've included pictures of pumpkins carved by folks in my office throughout this post just for fun.)

My five year old (The Moose) decided that he wanted to wear his soccer uniform as his Halloween costume. Well, that's easy for us, so what could possibly go wrong? How about temperatures around 50 and his insistence on wearing just his short-sleeve soccer jersey and shorts. After way too long, he finally agreed to wear sweatpants under his shorts and a long-sleeve shirt under his jersey.

However, let's go to earlier in the day. The Moose's school doesn't celebrate Halloween, but they get around this by hosting a Mother Goose day. Kids can dress up as a nursery rhyme character and are not permitted to wear super-hero costumes, masks, or bring any type of weapon. (Though I think someone dressed as Jack should be able to bring a miniature fake ax to chop down the beanstalk.) A friend let us borrow their monkey costume since I don't think Jack and Jill were soccer players. (Yes, monkey is a stretch for it chasing the weasel in Pop Goes the Weasel, but it counted). Anyway at the end of the day, we learned that somehow he lost the monkey costume after the parade ended. He already lost a library book and a pair of shoes* so far this year, so this is not a good trend.

Now, let's shift our attention to my two year old, Pedro Tulo. We got him a Marshall costume, the Dalmatian firefighter pup from Paw Patrol. He refused to wear it. We tried a Thomas the Train costume that his brother wore three years ago. Nope. We tried a train conductor costume that went under the Thomas costume. That also went poorly. Just the train conductor's hat? Uh, no. So Pedro Tulo went trick-or-treating as a two year that didn't want to wear a Halloween costume.

When we finally went trick-or-treating, things went fine. However, I'm starting to question why our neighborhood of townhouses decided to have so many stairs. It's not easy carrying a two year old and up down stairs for about an hour.

Despite all of this, Halloween was a success for the kids as they had fun and got lots of candy. This morning, The Moose told me, "I want to do Halloween again today."

I do have one suggestion. Can we create a Halloween in April event? Halloween seems to be the only time where our entire neighborhood comes together. A neighbor organizes a potluck and all of the kids and adults spend time eating, drinking, and socializing together. Seems like this should happen more than once a year.

Update: The monkey costume was found. Another kid "accidentally" took in home.

* The Moose's class went on a field trip to a local farm/pumpkin patch and were told to bring two pairs of shoes since they were going to get dirty/muddy. Fortunately, his newer pair of shoes were randomly found in a bag in a janitor's closet the next day.