I hadn’t wanted to bother with Halloween this year because I figure Allie’s too young to understand the concept, too young to eat candy, too young to stay up after dark to go trick-or-treating, and spending money on a costume she’s only going to wear once for a few hours? No, thanks. The week of Halloween, however, I started seeing people’s adorable photos of their kids in a variety of costumes, and I thought, “She’s only going to be this size once. By this time next year, she’ll be a kid in a costume, not a toddler.” (She’s practically kid-sized already. BTW, did you know that girls reach half their adult height at approximately 20 months, and boys at 24 months? So however tall your toddler is at those respective ages, double it, and you’re looking at an approximate. Allie is probably already half my height at 11 months, so in another 9 months…she’ll probably already be taller than I am.) But I still didn’t want to go thru the trouble of costume shopping for a few hours’ worth of wear. And then it hit me.
Before Allie was born, my court reporter Louise’s daughter was working in Disney Tokyo and had bought a little outfit for Allie. It was for a toddler and not an infant, so I’d put it away for future wear. I dug it out, and it fits! So for Halloween this year, Allie was Japanese. 😀
She had no hair to put up, so Mr. W made do. (har.) We decided to take her to nearby Saddleback Church’s “Blocktober” family event after work, which is a fall-themed campus-wide shindig with toddler areas, kid areas, teen areas, food truck area, shows, trick-or-treating, photo ops, rock-climbing walls, rides, ziplines… but Allie’s favorite thing is something she spotted immediately and beelined for.
“Bbbloon, bbbloon, bbbbloon!” she said, rushing off, before I even saw the balloon arch myself.
There weren’t a lot of kiddie rides she could go on without slipping off (like the carousel horse or the suspended swing ride), so she only got to go on this one. At least it’s a character she’s familiar with, given the theme of her bedroom. She even imitated him!
There were a lot of photo ops for our little pumpkin.
Her big sister even joined in on one of them.
And you can’t be a good authentic Japanese maiden without a nice nature background with water and big rocks in your photo.
One of the children’s classrooms giving out toys to trick-or-treaters found an age-appropriate toy for Allie: a rubber ducky squirter in a tiara! Allie loved it and hung on to it the whole time without dropping it. She bathed with it the other night already.
Can you believe that dressed like that, someone STILL mistook her for a boy? “Whoa there, little guy!” as he patted her head.
We got her home in time for her normal bedtime, which we were pushing back a little each day anyway in preparation for the Daylight Savings “Fall Back” schedule. I considered taping a piece of paper over the doorbell so kids would knock instead of ring the bell while Allie’s sleeping, and college roommie Diana’s dad had a higher-tech solution along the same lines and he disconnected the wires to their doorbell so Alexis could sleep through Halloween, but Mr. W ended up doing the low-tech version: he sat outside the front door on the porch and played on his iPad and presumably ate candy from our giant punchbowl of chocolates while he waited for kids to walk up to our front door. We didn’t get a lot of trick-or-treaters this year at all, according to him. Maybe 10 kids. I tried to tell him not to buy candy from Costco. =P We probably have 8 pounds left over. Where was everyone this year?