Evidently from her mom, who sent the novelty paci's for the girls to enjoy this Halloween. This shot was hard to get, because the girls are in a phase where any eye contact results in a face-cracking smile that makes a paci drop right out.
And yes, we will celebrate Halloween. I don't want my kids to grow up thinking that being a Christian exempts you from celebrating everything, especially a fun holiday where you dress up as something imaginative, eat yummy candy, and spend time with friends. In childhood I occasionally marked the holiday with squeaky clean events like a church "Harvest Party" where we all got down dressed as Bible characters. Believe me, no matter if you're Ruth, David, or King Ahab, everybody came in a bathrobe with towels on their heads. All the adults walked around with goofy smiles pasted on their faces, saying "Isn't this just as fun as trick-or-treating?"
Ummm... Nope, it wasn't.
Yes, the origins of Halloween aren't anything to laugh at. People used to dress up to "fool the evil spirits" and be defiant in the face of evil on All Hallow's Eve.
Obviously, it would be silly to believe that fake blood and bandages are real insurance against bad the things that happen to good people.
Let's face it, evil exists in this world, and it has nothing to do with mummies, slasher movies, or Team Edward and Team Jacob. If you have kids, the things that truly scare you can't be found in the holiday section of Target.
Separation...
Sickness...
Death.
The night before I had the twins, I was flush with pregnancy hormones and suddenly totally overcome with the gravity of the dangerous birth I was to go through the next morning. Odds were everything was going to be fine, but when I came face-to-face with the very real possibility that one or both of the twins could die, odds didn't matter. I couldn't keep it together. So, I locked myself in my bedroom and begged God on my face to spare the lives of my children.
He did.
Don't I love my God who overcomes evil? I think the worst way to honor him would be to stay inside with the porch light off and listen to choir music all night. I want to dress my kids up, give out the good candy, meet my neighbors, go to the party, and be happy and grateful because I'm on the side of good (and good wins).
For Devon, his definition of good meant being a ball. We recently figured out that he says "ball" to mean "good." It must be easier on his language skills. If I go get him up in the morning and ask how his night was and he says "A BALL," that means he had a really good night. It's how he asks for blueberries, his favorite food, in his Big Boy Booster we got for him this week. In the car on trips, he amuses himself by singing "Ballll-eeeee-alllll-eeeee-alllll..."
Unfortunately, they don't make ball costumes for toddlers. All the costumes at the store were ultra-commercial, which is one of my complaints about modern Halloween. If my son has never watched television, he doesn't want to be Elmo, Lightning McQueen, Spiderman, or any of the other characters that he will easily recognize when he's, like, 10. Type in "baseball costume" on Amazon and you'll find a uniform from whatever team you want with everything from the cap to the stirrups, but it wasn't what we wanted.
"Grrrr," I growled at the computer. "What if you don't want to be a ball PLAYER? Isn't there a costume you can buy to just be the BALL?" There wasn't, so my first Halloween with three children was marked by a time-honored rite of passage for crafty moms: locking myself in a room and frantically sewing on a costume three hours before the party started.
Devon's ball costume turned out pretty cute, though. He enjoyed running around and then flopping down hard on the soft tummy. I was afraid that, like many toddlers, he wouldn't enjoy dressing up, but he loved it. It turned him into a perpetual motion machine.
Here he is trying to put a paci in the twins' mouths. He did this once about six weeks ago and has been trying to repeat it despite the lack of the necessary fine motor skills. Sometimes he misses the point and tries for a paci in the eye.
I wanted to get all three kids in a cute First Halloween pose.
We got this close. Not very. Next year, I suppose.
Here's Little-Melina-Bumble-Bee! When they are old enough, the girls can be Disney-cat-fairy-pink-and-purple-ballet-princesses like I was in third grade, but until they're old enough to have opinions I can make them be whatever I want. Goody!
Here's Little-Carrie-Pretty-Flower in her costume. Before I had kids, I thought that parents who dressed their babies up for Halloween were foolish. If this was you and I made a comment about it, I apologize now. I was misguided.
Here's why we dress the babies up: it's ADORABLE! It doesn't matter if they will never remember their first Halloween, or even two or three more. Someday we can show them a picture and smile and say "Look how cute you were!"
We went to a Halloween party at the church we've just started attending. Nobody had to come dressed as Bible characters. They asked that nobody come as a Warrior of the Coming Zombie Apocalypse either, but that was okay. It was fun, and we lasted an hour and fifteen minutes. In terms of an outing with three small children, it's long enough. At home, we gave out candy and showed off our cute kids in their costumes as trick-or-treaters continued to trickle by much later than we thought they would.
It was a good day.
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