THE FANTASY - Halloween is a super fun holiday, during which my beautifully well behaved children dress in fabulous hand made costumes, joyfully skip around the neighbourhood telling adorable jokes in exchange for sweeties, which of course they won't eat because it's late, but they will be happy to eat one after their dinner the following night.
THE REALITY - Trailing the streets in the pitch black and freezing cold, trying to keep track of a bunch of kids who are so high on sugar, they seriously make looking after a bunch of drug addled rock stars on a night out look easy.
My particular child shaped challenges included;
* Daisy spitting on Charlie's face ("But mummy, I wasn't even aiming for his face!")
* Daisy throwing a massive strop because she kept forgetting the punchline to her Halloween joke
* A particularly fun apple bobbing incident, where Daisy was encouraged to put her head right in the water. She was a bit scared, so her brother kindly "helped" by shoving her head under the water for her. Cue all the adults screaming "NOOOOO!", Daisy emerging from the water howling like some kind of sea serpent, hair dripping wet and face paint sliding off like a melting waxwork. Charlie then went and sulked in a corner because he'd been shouted at, hiding like some kind of minature emo teen (to be fair, with the eyeliner and black clothes he was wearing for his costume, he fitted the bill quite nicely), whining that he was clearly a horrible person, didn't deserve a halloween party and hadn't actually intended to murder his
sister. I know he hadn't intended to drown her, I know this because I've been tempted to do the same on many occasions...
* They eventually got home, more or less in one piece, but way past their bedtime. Of course, Daisy chose the moment she got into bed to suddenly remember that she had homework, and no matter how much I tried to tell her she could do it in the morning, she was inconsolable. I did what any caring parent would do, I shut her bedroom door and let her strop it out until she fell asleep in a sweaty, whimpering heap.
Ahh, both kids asleep, I flopped on the sofa and breathed a sigh of relief. I would have consoled myself for the trauma of the evening by eating the contents of the kids Halloween bags, but I'm doing Slimming World at the moment, so I had an orange.
A SODDING ORANGE.
I think I deserve some kind of award for that alone.
