Two Down, Two to Go
She Who Puts Up With Me foolishly volunteered to organize the annual Halloween party for her mothers of twins group. That party was last night. Eighty-eight kids, most under the age of five, plus sixteen girl scouts who volunteered to help, and probably another fifty parents.
When She arrived home at 9:30 last night (the party having ended at 8:00, and I having brought the twins home shortly thereafter), it was straight into the bathtub for an hour. I get extra points for having the bath drawn and ready to go when She got home.
This was actually the second Halloween party so far this year. The first was Sunday evening, sponsored by my parents' country club. That was was easy. Just give the kids to Grandma and Grandpa, and then go out for a nice relaxing dinner. We have another tomorrow evening at the Childrens' Museum , which is my chance to volunteer. Then, of course, there's Halloween itself, which is Friday.
Then there are the parties at the kids' preschool, which seem to be going on all week. At least we don't have to do anything for those except kick in a couple bucks for the pizza fund.
At some point, Halloween morphed from one evening of Trick-or-Treating into an entire Halloween Season. This is at least partly the fault of the parents: I can still remember the candy-with-razor-blades scares of the 1980's (when I was in high school and so past the trick-or-treating stage). In response, parents started looking for alternatives for their kids which didn't involve walking around dark neighborhoods and begging candy from strangers.
Retailers gleefully encouraged this trend, too, looking for another holiday to promote and drive sales.
The end result is that every organization which wants to be "kid friendly" now has a Halloween party. The "kid unfriendly" organizations have Halloween parties, too, but those tend to involve alcohol.
How do you dress twins for a Halloween party? 1) Matching anything. Skeeter and Scamper went as two pumpkins, which was a popular choice. I saw matching Buzz Lightyears, too. 2) Pick a theme. Barnyard animals. Racecar and a driver. 3) My favorite: the Three Little Pigs (triplets). Thankfully nobody in this particular group was qualified to do the Seven Dwarves.