Day 579: A very scary Halloween

I know that it’s a little late for a Halloween update. In truth I’ve been trying to come up with a decent excuse for why I don’t have a single picture of my daughter in her Halloween costume. But my friend saved me yesterday by sending this one that she took.

Let me tell you a scary Halloween story. It starts about a week before the big day. We got a fuzzy little lion costume for Maddie. She loved it – on the hanger. On her body – not so much. As soon as I got her into it she freaked right out. So we ditched the lion. Thankfully we had a cheerleader outfit that we got as a gift. Cute, low maintenance; it seemed perfect. Until Fernando decided that maybe she shouldn’t be a cheerleader. He insists it’s because he wanted her to be something she would recognize, but I know it’s really because he didn’t want her in a short skirt. So the cheerleader was out. And I was out of ideas. And then I was at Toys R Us and it was like a light shone down through the heavens and pointed me in the right direction. Okay, really they were giving out free fairy wings at the cashier – but if that’s not a sign, I don’t know what is! So a fairy princess it was! I made the costume. You heard right, I made it. And then two days before Halloween Mads and Fernando decided to double team me: She let it be known that she hated the new costume (surprise, surprise) and he said that maybe a cheerleader would be cute after all. Sigh.

So as you can see she was a cheerleader. Cute, no? What you don’t see is the evening up until the time this picture was taken. I got stuck in traffic for ages and was right pissed off and not at all in the holiday spirit by the time I got home. Then we discovered that all renovation hell had broken loose at the house. Fernando spent an hour on hold with the phone company trying to sort things out – an hour that involved a lot of slamming of doors and swearing and general unpleasantness. So we finally leave, to go to a friend’s house. On the way there we get into a bit of trouble with the in-laws. Oh well. But at least Maddie is in great spirits. Until we get there and suddenly she’s not in a party mood after all. Screams. Slobbers. Panics. We spend an hour with her seconded in the back of the house, the mere sight of anybody sending her into great, heaving sobs. She finally calms down enough to eat a piece of candy. Which she proceeds to choke on. Really choke, complete with wheezing, gasping, a bright red little face. Thank god Fernando was there to flip her over and pound on her back till the candy flew across the room. Mildly terrifying, to say the least. And then, for the kicker, she vomits all over everything, including her costume.

Anyways, it seems a good barf is all she needed, cause she was good as gold after that – the life of the party.

So that was our Halloween. How was yours?