Happy Halloween!

A few weeks ago, Naomi’s daycare teacher informed us that they would be holding a Halloween party, at 3 pm on the ghoulish day, and that there was a sign up sheet for snacks. I signed up to provide cookies. In my vision of the party, all the parents of the tots would congregate in the room, sipping cider and eating cookies, trading tot stories and mingling while everyone admired the tots in their costumes. The teacher was non-committal about the whole thing, saying that there would be snack, the kids would dress in their costumes, and there would be a “pumpkin hunt.”

Because I know how prone I am to overdoing it, my original plan was to opt for the slice and bake cookies with the pumpkin or whatever in the middle. Americans have apparently gotten too lazy even to perform the slicing part and are now called on only to place the cookie disks onto the pan. The Halloween themed version of this “home-made” treat calls for applying white frosting and an “edible decoration.” Ew. I bought the kit anyway. And at the suggestion of a friend, some rice krispie treat fixings (food coloring included).

Monday night’s pumpkin carving went well- Naomi was fascinated by the pumpkin innards, and Jim’s jack-o-lantern art fell comfortably into the category of traditional/cheery. With Naomi in bed, the kitchen antics began. To make rice krispie treats is to participate in a peculiar alchemy of solids becoming liquids becoming solids again. It’s even more magical when you squirt drop after drop of yellow and red food coloring into the bubbling marshmallow goo… I used a pumpkin-shaped cookie cutter on the treats, so they were not only orange, but appropriately shaped and sporting a frosting gel expression. Spooky! I used the vanilla frosting in the sugar cookie kit to freehand some ghosts (according to a friend who graciously took home some remnants, they were really quite spectral).

Does it sound like I am boasting? Wait until I describe the costume! Naomi agreed that it would be fun to dress up like one of her favorite stuffed toys, the blue-footed booby bird. I bought fabric. I fumbled around with my sewing machine. I lucked into some little blue pants that prevented me from having to sew an actual item of clothing. I refuse to detail the frantic retail scavenger hunt that took place after the white hooded sweatshirt I ordered off the internet proved ridiculously large and made the innocent wearer look like a South Park character.

Halloween arrived. With my two large bags, one with cookies and orange crunchy marshmallow pumpkins (which, because of the decorations, have to be packaged in many separate containers), one with the unconvincing husk of a Galapagos squawker, I arrived at the daycare to see that all the other kids minus two were dressed in their costumes, all full body, one-piece pajama zip up affairs, a monkey, a lion, a giraffe, a Dalmation. I put the cookie bag down, and raced to get Naomi into her costume. Which she was totally not into at all. It was not until it was all the way on her that the difference between a homemade costume and a store-bought stood out so dramatically.

Wow. She looked goofy. Then one of the wings fell off. She started tugging at her beak/visor. About two minutes after putting her costume on, all that she was wearing was the hoodie, the pants, and the blue feet.

Snack was served- to the kids. I did not get it that the cookies I was bringing were only for the kids. They ate their melon and baby corn and pumpkin pie, supplied by less foolish parents than myself, and I sheepishly put a handful of rice krispie pumpkins on a plate and put them on a countertop. For the TWO other parents that showed up. Not two sets of parents. Two parents.

The kids had a great time- the teacher filled up a corner of the room with shredded paper; apparently this is some kind of invitation to fun for the toddler set. There was much gleeful shrieking. No one ate the cookies, of course. And I didn’t even open the rest of them up- just took them home, along with the little gray broken wings and blue fuzzy feet smeared with pumpkin pie.

So, the spookiest part of this year’s Halloween was the illumination of how my tendency to overdo things is magnified by the factor of my beloved child. In the evening, I pinned Naomi’s costume back together, wiped the pie off her feet, and took her to a couple of neighbors’ houses.

She was a champion trick-or-treater (although our practice of saying the phrase was for naught- she clams right up around strangers), held out her bag for candy (and, poor girl, has not gotten to eat any of the six pieces she scored),

and was appropriately frightened by some of the decorations. She also got to carry a flashlight supplied by her dear friend, Carmen’s mom.

(Carmen was an adorable pirate.) Until next year, Happy Halloween.