Halloween with Pictures and a Physics Lesson at the End

HALLOWEEN.
I don't even know where to start.  What is the point of this crazy holiday?  Where did it come from? We get all obsessed with the macabre and decorate our houses with dead bodies and dress up like people (if we're pets) or animals (if we're people), like grown-ups (if we're children) or prostitutes and corpses (if we're grown-up) and go around getting high on pounds of sugar with as much artificial-coloring as POSSIBLE, and tell our kids that, oh-all-right-you-can-take-candy-from-strangers-after-all. Or, alternatively, you can throw eggs at their houses.  Just this once.
What the?  Can you imagine moving here from a sane nation and trying to understand what the heck goes on?  Why people are carving faces into large vegetables and erecting styrofoam tombstones in their yards?  This is to symbolize....that we like to play dress up? ...that vegetables have feelings too? ...that we really like gross stuff and CSI is not a big enough outlet for our gruesome obsessions? Or that we just really, really, really want people to give us candy?  Maybe it was created secretly by the dental lobby.  I have no idea.  But we are good, patriotic Americans, people.  So we dress up and we eat pixie-stix and we monster mash whether we get it or not! Especially, now. 
Though this is technically our third Halloween as parents, it's really the first Little One was old enough to participate in. And my goodness.  We Halloweened ourselves OUT.
First of all, I had truly NO idea how much candy comes in when you have a kid this time of year.  It pours in.  It flows like Hersheys left in the car cup-holder.  It floods the basement.  It's amazing.
With all the "fall fun" events we attended, Little One trick-or-treated 3 times before it was even Halloween.  This helped Her to perfect Her technique, so that for the real deal She wobbled up to the front door by Herself, said "tick-o-treat", smiled, said "thank you" and did a happy candy dance (and apparently got extra helpings for cuteness) coming home with a huge haul. 
There were also parties, festivals, street fairs....I tell you.  The costume She picked out got plenty of use.  And plenty of candy.  The best thing about the cow costume, I think - besides the irony of watching Her drink SOY milk in it because of course if She were really a cow She would be allergic to Herself- was that J had a matching one! And needed practically no convincing to make it a father-daughter herd of candy-nabbing cuteness.  I got to take Her to the birthday/Halloween party that day, so J got to take Her for "real" trick-or-treating later while I manned the door.

Every year, we have run out of candy and had to do an emergency run to the store.  There are that many kids around here.  So this year, I double-stocked up.  Aaaannnnd so did J.  I guess we should have coordinated that.  Because not only did we replace almost as much candy as we gave out (due to the happy-cow dance) but we have lots leftover.  Which means that soon, I will have slowly Snicker-ed myself into a cow-like appearance as well.  COME TO MY HOUSE. EAT CANDY.   Please.
The scariest thing I saw this Halloween?  The number of parents who came to my door holding out their purses for a "treat" also.  This is always annoying to me.  But what made it scary is that it was actually legit, because at 14/15 years old,  the parents were still children themselves.  Oh my.
Little One loved all the events in which She got to be a "t-ow", and clearly got into trick-or-treat.  But She had at least as much fun handing out candy to the late teenager crowd when She got back home.
"One, you. One, you. This one? You. Happy Ween welcome!"   This was one of my favorite parts, too.  Because out of each teen too cool to be wearing a costume at all, or wearing something totally gory/horrible/verging on nudity/inappropriate/all of the above, even the ones who sauntered up to the door all swaggery, even the least likely-looking to do it said, "Aaaaw!! She's so cute!" and "oh hi little cutie! Are you a cow? OMG! The cutest cow!" and "Thank you! Widdle baby cowie (insert funny face)." 
This was the epitome of one of my favorite things, by far, about having a child. It's that little children have this energy that bends space-time around them, altering the view of the universe like a subtle shift in the curvature of a camera lens.  So that everything comes into a softer focus and you can see people's Good Side.  Even teenagers! Even under costumes and make-up and masks.  Both real and metaphoric.
I still don't get the "real" origin and meaning of Halloween.  But watching Little One work the crowd of dominatrix devils and axe-murdered zombies made me think that maybe one of the points of this oddball holiday is just to simply remind us that underneath it all, monsters are just the awkward kid with acne in the back of history class.  That whatever we pretend to be, or seem to be....we're really all...just people.   And we pretty much all like chocolate. 

Rally for Reason

I am blessed.  With friends who push the limits of extreme at every polar end of the political/philosophical spectrum, and lots who run amok in between, swaying one way or another.  While I may agree more, idealogically, with some than others, I have found a common ground of some sort to walk around and get coffee on with all of them.  I love all of my friends.  Even the crazies.
Both out of respect for them and the diversity of whoever else is out there (and because I've known and loved enough crazies not to want to deal with the drama of setting anyone off) I try to keep my political/religious/philosophical/etc opinions mostly out of this blog.  But I am going to go ahead and admit that today I had every intention of hauling my fat belly and small child to the Rally on the mall.
Because:
1) If I lived in Japan, at some point I would eat sushi.  If I moved to California, at some point I would go to the beach.  As a resident of DC, I think it only right that I attend a rally on The Mall.  And (since we had a newborn and missed out on all the presidential election stuff in 08) this one was the Mother of Rallies on The Mall in our time here. 
2) If I had the opportunity to go to Woodstock or the Million Man March, I would have gone for it.  Because there is just plain something cool about being present during a historic event.
3) I kind of like the message.  The "Rally to Restore Sanity And/Or Fear" was not really a political rally per se, but it was making a point still, I think, which I choose to interpret in a positive way.  
You do what you want!  Make signs and jump around, boycott, yawn, whatever! Me, I felt like going.
So there. Judge and rant. Or applaud.  It doesn't really matter anyways, because here is what happened.  Little One and I got all packed up and ultra prepared. J was working, the friend we were supposed to rally with had to make an emergency trip, and the one we had planned to meet there was waffling, so we were on our own.  But ready to rally!
Then we got to the Metro station.  WOW.  I wish I could describe it properly.  There were hundreds and hundreds of people there, holding their signs, wearing their round pins. 
The line just to buy a ticket for the train went through the entire station.
 
Out the door, across the courtyard, aaaaallll the way down the parking lot.

To the street.  Around the block. And- do you see that other line of people in the back there?-
(top, right corner)

Doubled back around the corner, up the other parking lot, and around the bend.

I have never seen anything like it.  I almost turned right back around.  But I decided to at least give it shot  (which I shouldn't have said out loud, because I spent the next 5 minutes consoling Little One that we weren't going to get shots on the train).
Since I have my commuter card, we miraculously bypassed this throng which had been standing for hours, and got on a train with not too long a wait.  The train was already full, but the next station was also teeming with people, who poured in somehow until we were all scrunched in, pressed against each other.  Every station was the same.
People who had been watching packed trains go by all morning and were sick of standing there made a mad rush for it and forced their way into cars that had nowhere for them to go.  People started getting more impatient and rough.  People on the train started getting more uncomfortable and defensive.  Ironically, for a rally about "being reasonable", people started getting a bit crazy.  A lot of them were drunk.  The air reeked of alcohol and sweat and it was hot and hard to breathe.  Some people were yelling and pushing, and every stop just seemed to take the high excitement in the air and turn it just a little more desperate.
One guy actually tried to perch on Little One's stroller tray, because the vertical space above Her was the only place left to fit a body.  People were falling on top of Her and knocking hard against Her stroller.  She started to get scared and overwhelmed and overheated. Truthfully She was already under the weather and it was just too much.  She started to cry a tiny, timid, trembling-lip cry and ask me to pick Her up.  Which I couldn't, because the train was so full I could not move my arms. 
Well.  There was a time I would have rolled with this, and maybe even thought it was kind of fun, in a crazy, exciting kind of way.  And I admit that I wanted, for Little One, to be able to tell Her one day that She had Been There.  But.  The number one Mama-rule and responsibility is to keep the Little One safe.  And my mommy instincts were sounding the alarm that maybe things were getting too out of hand this time.  Plus.  I really, really, really had to pee. 

Look at the train windows- packed!

So, as much as I hate to admit that I backed out of something, I did.  I yelled at the top of my lungs when we stopped that if someone would HELP ME get out, there would be room for them on the train, and people started ripping other people away from us until we got free, and the crowd swarmed the gap behind us.  Phew.
We tried.  I think I can say we tried, right?  I expected it to be crowded, but I didn't expect people to be drunk, at 10:30am.  I didn't expect it to be scary.  Shows what I know! Maybe I shouldn't have picked this for our first rally.  We should have warmed up with, say, a rally for saving the south-indonesian spotted salamander or something.  At any rate, we took the metro back to J's hospital, where there was a big Halloween party for kids, with trick-or-treating, games, crafts, elmo, dancing, and other fun stuff.  Much more Little One's speed.  
And that's the thing about having kids.  No matter what your political/idealogical leanings are, no matter what your ideas of a good time on a Saturday are, when you become a parent, they shift.  The way you express them changes.  There is compromise, there are alternatives.  You have to, well...be reasonable.  Which I guess was sort of the point, after all. 

 

Cultural Heritage by Rolling Pin

Do you ever buy tortillas at the grocery store?  But have you ever read the ingredients?!  There is so much multi-syllabic (excuse my french but) crap in there it's crazy.  Do you know what belongs in tortillas?  Flour.  Water, shortening, salt.  So what's all that extra partially-hydrogenated thisnthat in there for?! 
Before Little One won the soybean challenge, all that (excuse my french but) crap also meant that She couldn't eat them.  And I thought.  Here I am.  The grand-daughter of a Mexican.  And I'm eating these fake, nastified, gringo-tortilla wannabe things and my baby gets nada to scoop Her frijoles with.  Something wrong with this picture. 
So Little One and I took out the whopping 4 items we needed (we just used soy-free vegetable oil instead of shortening in Hers) and said, (excuse our French but) olvidale crappy gringo-tillas! We'll make our own! 
With a little  help from Her lovely assistant, Little One mixed up Her ingredients. 

She patted the dough into little spheres. 

She rolled them out into ciruelas

And carried them into the cocina. 

We cooked them up, easy as pie.  Actually a lot, lot easier than pie.

And we bundled them all warm and yummy around our fajitas.

Little One said it best (no French needed). 







"Delicioso!"  










I'm pretty sure we can never go back to tortillas that need French to describe them.  Which is sort of a blasphemous thing to do to a tortilla, really (as is adding mono-di-gluta-expialidocious for no good reason). These were so easy, fun to make together, and so, so, SO much yummier than store-bought.   If you want to try it yourself and want to use a recipe, I suggest you check out this one at The Vagabond Table.  As the New Mexican in me would say, "hijole! so gooooooood!"

...But It Is.

Out of the blue a few days ago:

J: "So...C?"
C: "Yep?"
J: "So....which one of us do you think is more likely to go crazy?"
C: "You".
J: "...you answered that fast..."
C: "Yup. You. Why?"
J: "...I was just thinking that our life is great".
C: "Yeah....?"
J: "Well, I was thinking that our life is so great. But, then again, I guess everyone's life is great at some point, right? Then someone just goes crazy."
C: "Aw. Worried that it's all too good to be true, Love?"
J: "well...kinda."

I laughed at him gently, gave him a kiss and kept folding laundry.
And said fevered prayers of thankfulness in my heart.  Because that is what I do, when I see that my husband and I are on the Same Page.  It's not uncommon.  But not to be taken for granted. 
Too good to be true... 
The truth is we do this sometimes, in various ways.  We plow through life, steeling against it and digging in the balls of our feet and grinding forward; weighing the options, paying the bills, taking turns, giving things up, taking things on.  And then every so often, we stop.  We shift our weight back to our heels for a moment, hold hands, wipe our brow, look around.  And then we look at each other in wonder asking, "Really? We did all this? Is it ours? To keep? It's lovely!" We put our arms back out before us and push ahead some more.
In truth there's not a lot to show.  In truth, this will go down as a tough stretch in our historical narrative.  J working long, hard hours.  Working long and hard every day.  Coming home to take out the trash,  clean up after dogs, enforce time-outs. Never getting enough sleep. Me working long, hard hours.  Trying to keep things together when my body is already occupied with the work of adding to our future chaos.  Chopping and cooking things that become nothing but a mess a few hours later.  Cleaning and cleaning things that are instantly dirty again; Sisyphus with a sponge and mop.  Being alone most of the time, and at the same time never alone for a second.
It's hard.  It's not going to turn anyone green with envy.
But the truth is that despite the Hard, despite the Tired and the Mundane and the Overwhelming-at-times- this is what we hoped for.
Plowing through life, side-by-side.  Our home is perpetually skimming a sea of disarray, sometimes dipping its toes in or taking a quick dive.  It's small and getting smaller.  It's got its share of aggravations.  But it's nice.  It's warm and it has things we need, things we like, things we saved for.  It has little hooks and shelves in all the convenient places.  
We spend every spare second we might have for ourselves attending to the needs, the wants, the whims of our small child. She is demanding, She is exhausting, She is ceaseless.  But She is our greatest source of joy and light. She is enough reason, enough compensation, for this hard work.  This sweating and building and honing of a Life.
We feel like we rarely see each other. But when we do, we bask in the togetherness, we hold fast to each other, we push on with our shoulders touching. 
It's not the easiest life, not the fanciest life.  But it's not the hardest, not so rough at the edges.  What it is, is steady and safe and calm; a haven.  What it is, is honest and well-intentioned.  What it is, is full of love, full of happy, full of trying our very best.
It's more than enough to work hard for.  It's more than enough to be thankful for and to relish.
It's just plain More Than Enough.
Almost too good to be true. 

Good Egg, Bad Egg

A few days ago, Dr. Allergy called and said that Little One's IGE levels had fallen low enough that She was, as we had hoped, a candidate for another food challenge! We were so excited that he even sweet-talked the staff into squeezing us in the very next morning!
We were there, early and chipper and with J's mom along to entertain us, and we made it through the first two "doses" with no problems!
Then came the hives.
I and blamed them on the toy she had picked up in the waiting area.
So we waited awhile and repeated the same dose once more (about the size of half a pea). I kept Her in my lap, touching nothing.
And then came the hives.
There was a consult. There was the consideration of rare, one in a million chances that the test could have been thrown off by one thing or another. All discounted.
Fail.
Dr. Allergy says he almost never sees a reaction during a food challenge. But Little One is special, as we know.
So eggs remain off the list for at least a year, and everything else is too high to even think about until then. But, honestly, if I had to have picked one for Her to ditch, it would be the soy, and so I think we lucked out.
Thankfully, there was grandma. Whew! And a LOT of stickers. And nothing worse than hives. And despite being awakened early, forced to sit still for hours, getting itchy, and being compensated by two shots in the leg and then getting kept out and about all afternoon without a nap (so that J could go home and sleep, having just returned from working like mad in the ICU for 30 hours straight), despite all that She was full of sweetness. She hung in there like a champ.
What can I say? She's a good egg.
As for the rest of them- I say eggs are over-rated anyways! Forget you eggs! We'll see you suckers in a year and see how tough you feel then! Ha!

Things I Love

I need a new category.
If I have one called "ranting", I should balance that out, no? There are some things that make my heart sing. I think I will try to make a habit of sharing those. In case they become like that horrific "cal-i-forn-ia girls" song and become totally contagious and embedded in your psyche, so that whether you like it or not, your heart sings too.
So here are some things that make my heart sing. Things I Love.
This time, because it's so easy- Things I Love about Little One:

*How She mispronounces certain words. Like
Shish (fish) or
Tursey (thirsty) or
Buh-lal-er-la-ler (Banana)

*How She thinks that "balance" and "bounce" sound the same. So during clean-up time when I ask Her to put away Her tea-tray, and to be careful to balance it, She holds it gingerly, and walks so carefully to the shelf... bouncing at the knees every other step. Repeating softly to Herself, "bounce, bounce, bounce".

*That She puts "yah" at the end of everything, and it makes everything cute.
As in a statement, to solidify a decision or argument: "Mommy, this book, yah. Yah mommy, this one. Not this one. This one, yah. Yah mommy."
Or (in the middle of the night) "Thirsty! Thirsty Yah! Water yah mommy! Water Yah!"
Or as a question:
"Cracker? Yah? Little One cracker mommy? Yah? Mommy? Cracker ya?"
or "This? This bug? Yah mommy? Bug yah?" No, hon, it's a raisin. But still, you are a cutie.

*That when She has bad dreams She calls out for "tuckies" and "snuggles" from down the hall.

*That She reads Her books to the doggies while they lie in their beds.

*That She reads Her books "to the baby" while we cuddle in mine. Occasionally patting my tummy and showing it the pictures.

*That She either pretends or believes that if She looks right into my belly button, She can see the "tiny baby". Babies look like lint, perhaps? Could be. Kind of a Rorschach thing, I suppose.

*That She never fails to say "bleff you!" when someone sneezes.

*That She still loves Her tea parties, and loves them best when we all attend. And that, while She meticulously sets out dishes and plastic food for us all, She brings an extra cup to my spot. "Mommy, this one, no you. This one special. This for baby."
She holds it up to my belly button. And dabs it with a napkin.

The Kids In The Hood

Our neighborhood has a lot of kids in it. A LOT of kids. They swarm the area behind my house, where the pond and the playground are. They seemed to reach a critical mass in the thick of last summer, when it felt like the area was positively teeming, saturated, with children.
These children started to drive me crazy.
If they had parents, instead of being a Lord of the Flies camp in action as I suspected, they were never anywhere to be found. They were SO. LOUD. Screaming, hollering, whooping, singing, swearing, yalping, whistling, shrieking. By the dozens! An endless cacophony streaming in the windows on the soft warm air.
They were always irritating me; terrorizing the stragglers, harassing the animals, pulling branches off the trees, leaving wrappers everywhere.
Finally, I decided, that's It!
I created a weapon. I grabbed my back-up (Little One), and I hit the playground to combat the obnoxiousness. It was a large force I was up against, but this, Peanuts, was not my first picnic.
I happen to have a battle plan; finely honed over years of facing unruly bunches of short people.
So here is what I did:
I went to the playground. And I played.
I talked directly to every kid, I gathered up their names. I came back, every day. They started to get kinda used to me. (I'm so sneaky!) They started to play with Little One. (It's working!) I started to have their names memorized. (I've got you now!) And then I brought out the Weapon. The big guns. Loaded! With chocolate chips.
COOKIES. Oh yes I did.
And that was it. The kids and me? We were Friends. You may not think, at first, that this is the best way to fight an enemy, but it is! Especially small, sneaky ones.
Because the thing is, once we were friends, and we played together, and we laughed together, and we had a serious mutual respect and trust going, they started to care. To care about Little One, and to care what I think.
So, suddenly, a casual conversation about what "mental disability" is wasn't a lecture, so much as a chat that got some boys thinking, and now a certain someone has a group of protectors rather than teasers. Suddenly, a disapproval of littering, and praise for picking up trash translates to a way to impress a friend. "See, C? I always put my wrapper in the trash can" and "Hey! Hey! I do too!!" Heh, heh.
Suddenly, I can yell from my back deck, "Hey guys, She's taking a nap!" and the decibels fall. Or, "LJ Brian you had better leave those geese alone!" and LJ is embarassed. LJ is ashamed. LJ doesn't chase the geese.
In fact, it's surprising how much of a deterrent it is, just to know that there is a grown up watching, who cares, and who knows your NAME.
And if that grown up is someone who doesn't just yell at you, but who respects you, who you like, well. Then you might not even want to act up behind their back...especially if the grown-up is friends with all the other kids...who will tell on you.
Oh yes. These days, not a whole lot goes on in the Land of the Flies that I don't hear about. And I know everyone well enough to know who are the real trouble-makers, who are the followers, who are the peacemakers. It makes it a lot easier to deal with problems as they arise, knowing how each kid responds to different tactics.
And, to be honest, now that they're all my little buddies, the noise just doesn't bother me so much. And some of the annoyances are not such a bad trade-off for the fact that Little One now has a Legion of admirers.
She calls to them from the deck and they flock to talk to Her and make faces so She'll laugh. "Mommy mommy! Friends outside! Friends! Playground please, please mommy!" We go and someone sees us coming. "Little One's here! Little One's here!" and they all come running. They line up to hug Her, and give Her sticks and freshly picked weeds, and fight over who gets to push Her in the swing first. They teach Her how to climb the ladder, hold Her hand on the bridge, and make sure She always gets a turn.
Little One is by far the little one in the group; the next youngest in the "regular" crowd is nearly 4, most are between 6 and 10. But they all adore Her, and are never too cool for Her to kiss them. And when there is a new kid on the playground, they always introduce both of us as their friend.
In a way, it's added more noise to our lives, rather than less. After too many days of 5 and 6 rings of the doorbell asking if we could come out and play, I had to institute a "no ringing, no knocking, unless someone is bleeding or broken" rule.
J sometimes gets home to find a half dozen children giggling in the living room, or "helping" me make dinner, or knotted around the stoop, trying to make Little One laugh through the glass door.
But Little One does laugh, and it's lovely. I get my groceries carried in by 6th graders, in exchange for the bragging right of calling out from my deck that they're in C's house. My dog gets more fetch, wrestles, pats and ear scratches than he knows what to do with. I am fairly confident that no matter what goes down in my neighborhood, no one is going to mess with my house, my yard, or my car. Not with my little fleet of spies and guards running in the streets. I know no one will dare mess with my baby. And, I get to play. I get to talk about things like what is the best amusement park ride ever, or how high does the highest tree in the whole world probably grow. And I always, always, have a reason to bake cookies.

Amarillo

Reading in our Spanish book:

C: "This color is on sunflowers, bananas, and lemons. Que color es este?"

Little One: "Ah-mommy-mio!"

Amusement Park Report: Amusing!

Our adventures to Six Flags were a success!
They might have been even more fun if:
- She had taken a nap at any point in the day
- The website advertising over 20 rides for people under 36" had mentioned that for most of them the little person is required to ride with another child over 36".
- and/or we'd had the forethought to buy some really tiny, but really tall platform shoes for Little One ahead of time.



But! The weather was amazing, the lines for mini-rides were also mini, and there was a playground and a fountain.

And we did find a few friendly older kids willing to pretend they were a sibling. For some of the really crazy rides, like this train that went in a circle at 0.5 MPH. Woo. Hoo.

• 

There were also some fun ones that She could go on with an adult, so we all had fun together.


And, She rode Her first ever roller coaster! Actually it was pretty fast and furious, relatively speaking. She rode it once, and then said, "No no Mama, that one too big. Little too big. 'Nother time, that one." Those darn Six Flags people and their "safety". They're turning Her soft, I tell you!

Maybe Her threshold for thrills was just a little low that day. Because at the end, when it started to get dark, there was a Halloween "un-scary" area, where Little One got to Trick-or-treat (for chocolate to feed Her unborn sibling.) and then go on a hay ride.
The hay ride was for children only. You load them up in a wagon, wave bye-bye, and watch them roll off into the dry-ice mist and twinkling jack-o-lantern lights. Little One had no qualms. "Bye Mommy!" without even looking at me.

And I got a little of that mist in my eyes. My baby! Getting so grown up! Doesn't even need Her mommy! J and I waited. We got the camera ready for the arrival shot. And....

A round of "Awwwww!" from the waiting parent crowd. A look of panic in the girl sitting next to Her. Apparently, She had put Her arm over the side, and the girl pulled it back in. Stranger danger! Someone touched my arm! Mommy! Daddy! I can't see you in the fog! AHHH!

So maybe She's still my baby, just a little bit.