Halloween Wrap-up and Other Halloween Ramblings

Well, I did it. I finished the costume with plenty of time. In the end, she surprised me by choosing to be Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. I was concerned she might switch to the Wicked Witch (aka Elphaba from Wicked) but I was not expecting Dorothy. The good news was that the pattern I bought had a Dorothy dress in it as well and I had not bought the fabric for the Glinda dress.


I can’t say I was able to follow the pattern perfectly so once I had the size right, I did end up improvising a lot. But my daughter loved it and seemed genuinely happy to have a dress made especially for her. The little one was tracking to be Dorothy as well but in the middle of the week (and middle of dress construction) she received a dinosaur costume for her baby doll from my Mom and she decided she wanted to be a dinosaur, too. Lucky me, we actually had a dinosaur costume in the dress up trunk. Honestly, a Dorothy and happy dinosaur are quite apropos for my girls.

But here are my two complaints about Halloween:

1. Why does every woman whose daughter dresses up as princess feel the need to tell me that their daughter “isn’t really into princesses but for some reason she just wanted to be a princess so I let her”? Aaaaaaaaaack! Your daughter wanted to be Belle? You mean the one who can’t stop reading and falls in love with a hideous creature? The horror. I have two girls and let me tell you, unless you live in a bubble, you cannot avoid the princess thing. And while sometimes it can be overkill, when your toothpaste is princess, your pull-ups are princess and your fruit snacks are princess, isn’t fantasy what Halloween is all about? I think it is so sad that our society has gotten to a place where a child wanting to dress up as a princess when they are three is embarrassing for mothers. It’s not like they are asking to be Britney Spears. Get over it.
2. News flash!! Kids eat candy on Halloween. And I know it’s shocking but sometimes they like it. This is another one. Why does everyone keep telling me that their daughter or son doesn’t really eat candy or even better, doesn’t really like candy? Why are people so defensive about their kids eating Halloween candy? We have all gotten ourselves so crazy that people feel like they are going to be judged because their child likes candy on Halloween. People like chocolate and you don’t have to eat it every day to like it. It’s like somehow if they imply that their child actually LIKED the candy on Halloween then I must think they give their child candy for breakfast, lunch and dinner. So every conversation was like, “Yes, we had fun but you know we don’t really let them eat candy so they didn’t really know what to do with it.” What??? This makes me crazy. And I’m not talking about really little children and babies. I get that some of them actually have never had candy before. That said, my neighbor’s two-year-old was opening it faster than they were handing it out. And she was loving it. I never once thought, God she must eat candy every day if she likes it this much. Again, get over it. It was Halloween.

--Crafty Mom