Showing posts with label Halloween. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Halloween. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Sunday, October 14, 2007
A Scary Time of Year
I've always enjoyed Halloween. My husband and I met at a Halloween party, and my birthday is about a week before the 31st, so I get a lot of festive fun at the end of October. I've always enjoyed coming up with unique costumes, something that started in the 5th grade, when I borrowed a neighbor's antique hoop skirt and created a kick ass princess costume that garnered a lot of attention and admiration for my budding artistic skills. It also taught me the necessity of wearing shorts under skirts any time I might inadvertently flash someone, but that's another story.
Over the years, I've fashioned costumes ranging from simple to elaborate. Some of my favorites were the last minute ones, like the year I wasn't planning on going out until a last minute party invitation became irresistable. Instant costume: take an egg and blow it out, crumple up a paper bag into a nest shape, hot glue the egg to the nest and the nest to a barrette, throw on a green tunic and brown tights and voila! You're a tree!
Obviously, I've always had fun with the costume part of Halloween, but since becoming a mother I've had other issues. Halloween can be very scary for kids, and that is something we are dealing with this year. There have been umpteen discussions about different varieties of monsters, and lots of whining about costumes and begging to watch Halloween-themed television shows. We went searching for a costume at a party store and my son reacted to some of the way-too-adult decorations I tried to hustle him past with a catatonic deer-in-the-headlights gaze.
For our family, though, there is an extra level of scary on Halloween. When my son was 18 months old, he had an allergic reaction to a cracker that had traces of peanut butter on it. When your child is diagnosed with a severe food allergy, it's a frightening shift in the level of responsibility for what goes into your child's mouth to realize that every bite of food - heck, even the smell of peanut butter sets off some allergic reactions - is potentially dangerous. My first thought after getting confirmation of his allergy was, "Oh no! Now I'm going to be That Mom! The one who won't let you bring cupcakes to school to celebrate your kid's birthday! The one who pesters you at the party about the ingredients in the cake! Dammit!"
These days, I try to take the kids out trick or treating and enjoy it instead of freaking out. I just never thought that the scariest part of Halloween would be the candy.
____________________
The best place I've found for information and support for the families of children with food allergies is FAAN - The Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network.
Over the years, I've fashioned costumes ranging from simple to elaborate. Some of my favorites were the last minute ones, like the year I wasn't planning on going out until a last minute party invitation became irresistable. Instant costume: take an egg and blow it out, crumple up a paper bag into a nest shape, hot glue the egg to the nest and the nest to a barrette, throw on a green tunic and brown tights and voila! You're a tree!
Obviously, I've always had fun with the costume part of Halloween, but since becoming a mother I've had other issues. Halloween can be very scary for kids, and that is something we are dealing with this year. There have been umpteen discussions about different varieties of monsters, and lots of whining about costumes and begging to watch Halloween-themed television shows. We went searching for a costume at a party store and my son reacted to some of the way-too-adult decorations I tried to hustle him past with a catatonic deer-in-the-headlights gaze.
For our family, though, there is an extra level of scary on Halloween. When my son was 18 months old, he had an allergic reaction to a cracker that had traces of peanut butter on it. When your child is diagnosed with a severe food allergy, it's a frightening shift in the level of responsibility for what goes into your child's mouth to realize that every bite of food - heck, even the smell of peanut butter sets off some allergic reactions - is potentially dangerous. My first thought after getting confirmation of his allergy was, "Oh no! Now I'm going to be That Mom! The one who won't let you bring cupcakes to school to celebrate your kid's birthday! The one who pesters you at the party about the ingredients in the cake! Dammit!"
These days, I try to take the kids out trick or treating and enjoy it instead of freaking out. I just never thought that the scariest part of Halloween would be the candy.
____________________
The best place I've found for information and support for the families of children with food allergies is FAAN - The Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network.
Friday, October 5, 2007
Tricked Out and Tacky
I've had just about enough of the modern American version of Halloween.
Don't get me wrong: I'm all for dressing up in silly, scary or clever costumes and collecting bucket-loads of candy from the neighbors. Hey - I might even try to do this today. I'm pretty sure I still have my gold tooth from last year when I was Forty Cent, an up and coming rapper who was possibly related to another famous rapper who used to live in my town.
It's the Halloween "decor" I have been seeing with increasingly frequency that I find perplexing and disturbing.
Call me old-fashioned, but I see nothing silly, scary or clever about bloody-looking human body parts, headless bodies in guillotines, and cemetery headstones that read: Your Name Here.
Is hanging a limp human dummy from a noose attached to a tree simply a fun way to show your Halloween spirit?
Must we blow the electric grid for the entirety of New England because we feel compelled to blanket our house and yard with hundreds of blinking, mini pumpkin lights?
And don't even get me started on the inflatables.
What ever happened to a couple baskets of colorful mums and a pumpkin or two? What's wrong with Indian corn, a bale of hay and a scarecrow?
Is it just me here, ranting like a gangrenous zombie with oozing green stuff coming out of my eyeballs?
Should I "join 'em" and run out to the Halloween store and drop $250 on a voice-activated coffin with a decaying corpse inside?
Where's my gold tooth? I think I'm gonna need it.
Don't get me wrong: I'm all for dressing up in silly, scary or clever costumes and collecting bucket-loads of candy from the neighbors. Hey - I might even try to do this today. I'm pretty sure I still have my gold tooth from last year when I was Forty Cent, an up and coming rapper who was possibly related to another famous rapper who used to live in my town.
It's the Halloween "decor" I have been seeing with increasingly frequency that I find perplexing and disturbing.
Call me old-fashioned, but I see nothing silly, scary or clever about bloody-looking human body parts, headless bodies in guillotines, and cemetery headstones that read: Your Name Here.
Is hanging a limp human dummy from a noose attached to a tree simply a fun way to show your Halloween spirit?
Must we blow the electric grid for the entirety of New England because we feel compelled to blanket our house and yard with hundreds of blinking, mini pumpkin lights?
And don't even get me started on the inflatables.
What ever happened to a couple baskets of colorful mums and a pumpkin or two? What's wrong with Indian corn, a bale of hay and a scarecrow?
Is it just me here, ranting like a gangrenous zombie with oozing green stuff coming out of my eyeballs?
Should I "join 'em" and run out to the Halloween store and drop $250 on a voice-activated coffin with a decaying corpse inside?
Where's my gold tooth? I think I'm gonna need it.
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