Halloween’s a-comin’!

Yay!  The costume and decor catalogs are arriving… our family’s favorite holiday is around the corner!

I can feel my heart beat faster as I open the catalogs to shop for costumes for the girls this year… quivering in anticipation to see what’s new… let’s see… um… butterflies.  Ladybugs.  Dora??

Kill me now.

Let me explain something.  Halloween, to us, is not rainbows and Care Bears.  It’s not Bunnies and Diego.

Halloween is zombies, skeletons, screams, and blood.  And it’s fun.  Halloween is watching the candy-buzzed children jump when the sound effects machine warbles a choked shrieeeeeek at the bottom of the driveway (cleverly controlled by remote, to blast at just the right second).  It’s the fog machine, masking the motion-activated shrouded mechanical figure that will jump out at the closest person to be fated to walk in it’s path.  It’s the howling of the ghosts from the upper window of our home, where the speakers are set to blast a full two hour’s worth of frighteningly eerie noises.

There’s no room for Princesses here.

It’s the seemingly inert man in the corner who jumps to life (yes, that’s the hubby) as soon as someone braves the front porch steps, which are mysteriously lit by a flashing strobe light.  It’s giggling at the bigger kids who jump at the Frankenstein face that begins to sing a ridiculous, and not by any stretch scary, song when they walk by.  It’s trekking to the sidewalk to drop the Snickers bar into the bag of the toddler too afraid to come near enough to reach into the bowl that I hold.

Yeah, it’s that good.

It’s watching the kids that cross on the other side of the street because they remember us from last year.  And it’s watching the kids line up at our porch because they remember us from last year.

It’s not about cute ballerinas.  Not here.

What’s wrong with skeletons, zombies, or Bloody Mary for toddlers?  Nothing.  As I hear the collective gasp of every I’m-on-the-bandwagon-by-the-book-OMG-you’re-wrong-to-dress-your-toddler-up-in-anything-but-a-commercially-approved-happy-flowers-out-our-arse-costume mom in the world that’s reading this, who wouldn’t dream of dressing their cute little girl in anything short of Strawberry Shortcake, lemme ask… why not?  Why is there not a market for scary costumes for little people?

Don’t get me wrong – butterflies and ladybugs are cute on toddlers.  But it’s just not for us.

This girl is adorable.  Oh yeah. 

 Yeah.  And she had a GREAT time.   

Now… what shall they be this year?  Hmmm…. the fun is just beginning.