Pre-Halloween

There is always something going on in the neighborhood. The weekend before Halloween there is always a parade on Roscoe Street, and, oh my word, I had sooo been looking forward to this! At the beginning of October, I began the search for the perfect Halloween costumes for my little monkeys, and Clint and I quizzed Mimi on what she wanted to be.

"Mimi, do you want to be a kitty for Halloween?"

"Yesh!"

"What about a fairy?"

"Uh huh!"

"Do you want to dress up like a dishwasher?"

"Yesh, I lub a dishwasher!"

And so on and so forth. So I decided to take her shopping in the costume aisle at Target one day, and what was it that she truly lubbed? The princess costumes, of course. And it hit me that it would be so cute for Mimi to be a princess and Mack to be a frog (since she likes to kiss on him all the time). But Mommy did not lub them. They were all thin and shottily made. Yuck. My child could not have a skanky Halloween costume. I searched on-line and in catalogues and found my absolute most favorite princess costume of all time . . . that cost a whopping $90. You've gotta be kidding me. So I decided that I, the budding seamstress, could just whip one together for the little princess.

How stupid of me. No wonder that princess costume cost $90. It was R-I-D-I-C-U-L-O-U-S, I tell you, and it took me an hour just to cut out all the little stupid pieces of the pattern. And then trying to figure out the directions and cutting and sewing all the slippery satiny fabric was a disaster at times. BUT five minutes before the parade began, Mommy quickly rigged up some velcro on the back since I didn't have time to insert the zipper and away we went to the parade. By the way, Mack's frog costume took, like, 30 minutes. I seriously considered making a frog costume for Mimi with a pink bow and calling it the end of the day.

On our way there, we spotted lots of little animals and storybook characters and superheroes, and I could see the excitement growing on Mimi's face. When we arrived, she could hardly contain her happiness --- A PARADE!!




The band from a local college was dressed in their Halloween costumes and lined up ready to march. One thing Mimi likes to do at home is hand me a maraca or tambourine, and we march around the den while she sings, "March in a 'rade, doo doo doo!" Even Ruthie joins in occassionally. She always grabs her princess wand and pretends it is a horn that she is tooting. So as soon as the band marched down the street, Mimi begged to get out of the stroller so she could "march in a 'rade." And march, she did.

Mack wasn't much into the marching, so he snuggled on Daddy's shoulder instead.

After the parade the stores were handing out candy to the trick-or-treaters, so Mimi got in some practice before the real Halloween. She loved pointing out all the other costumes -- "Look, Mommy, it's Woody and Mickey Mouse and a puppy! Silly!" But guess what. There were no other princesses like Mimi. Well, we already knew that, didn't we?