Yesterday held well visits for my 3 yr old and 18 month old. You know what that means: vaccinations. Oh I felt so bad! They were so cheerful--they always are right before the shots. And then you have to hold them still, while the nurses poke them, all while they're looking right into your eyes, all teary, as if to say, "REALLY? You were a part of this conspiracy all along?!"
The bad news is, this particular torment follows our decision to only pass out tiny amounts of Halloween candy at a time. Oh for the days of gleeful abandonement and sugar intake. Actually, this was never a particular crave of mine. I had my favorites, like banana taffy and whoppers, but the rest I mostly used to bribe my little sister. I remember dumping it all out on the rust-colored shag in our living room, smelling the mixed-sugar, leaf- thrown-in treatness of it. Scrambling to be the first to hand my dad a Snickers bar. Poor mom. She had been the one to dress us in costumes that she had painstakingly Elmer's-glued together.
My favorite costume was my Wonder Woman one. From what I recall, the eagle emblem done in said glue and gold glitter was a spot-on replica. Not to mention the stars on the blue shorts that matched. I have a vague recollection of questioning my mom's decision to put the starts on shorts, rather than the briefs that Linda Carter wore, but she was not to be swayed.
Nor was she to be swayed the year she created the Hershey's Kiss. Now this costume was the coup de ville of all costumes, being resurrected several times for various functions. The year of its debut as the Kiss, my mom somehow configured a hula hoop, sheet, fishing line, and lots and lots of aluminum foil to perfectly resemble a Kiss, complete with a paper tag on top. The costume must have taken her some time, because she kept it hanging in the basement to be overhauled into a Christmas tree (my sister was, of course, the present) and the fat lady (picture layers and layers of crepe paper) for the Kiddie parade float in which our neighboor crew depicted a circus. I greatly disliked this configuration of costume design, the only perk being that I was given a pop tart to nibble on throughout the parade.
I'm somewhat amazed that Halloween has come and gone already this year. Pumpkin carving (my 3 year old cried when we took out the first scoop of "guts"), hot glued costumes (My four year old asked to be Queen Frostine from Candyland five hours before Go time--how easy we have it these days, eh Mom?), candy collection (the haul will sustain my three teens at least through the month), and cobwebs that can be dismissed as decor all put to rest for another year. This fast-forward effect brings tears to my eyes, almost as quickly as the thought of the next well-visit.