Mary Had a Bag O’ Candy

“AJ, what do you want to be for Halloween?” we asked for weeks. “You can say ‘trick or treat’ and get candy, but you have to dress up in a costume. What do you want to dress up as?”

“You could be a ballerina.” “Noooo.”

“Do you want to be a kitty?” “Nooooo.”

“You could be Mickey Mouse with your Mickey hair!” “No, no Mickey, no.”

“A puppy? A pirate? A scarecrow? A football player?” “No no no no no.”

One day we were singing “Mary Had a Little Lamb” in the car, as we are wont to do now that we must read/sing the Mary Had a Little Lamb (1980s version) book a minimum of twice a day. It’s a current obsession. Perhaps she’s attracted to the bright colors.

Like, totally sweet color scheme!

“Hey, you could be Mary Had a Little Lamb for Halloween! You could dress up like Mary and get candy–would you like that?”

“No. Yes! Mary had little lamb trick or treat! Mary!”

Hmm, I wonder how we would do that, I thought, about 30 seconds too late. “Uh, or you could be something else, like…” “MARY!”

Thus began the process of (a) figuring out how many layers we could get under a dress and (b) making sure she was not expecting to dress up in fluorescent yellow overalls, a yellow and pink polo shirt, pink socks, and yellow Keds. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, provided you are still located in 1989.

We did end up with yellow and pink but did manage to get some more traditional gingham involved.

She was ridiculously cute reaching for doorbells and whispering “tick a tweet.” (”Louder!” we said. “Yell it!” “TIck UH teeeee!”) After a few houses she was ready to go pro and step right up without us. We basically went around our block to the people we know and then over to the local college’s dorms, where good-natured students hang out in their doorways to bless hordes of little freaks and geeks with a variety of sweets and lifelong dental issues. This was nice because we got to get out of the crazy wind a bit (what is this, the Oregon coast?). Then we went home, handed out some candy, pigged out, and got AJ ready for bed before our favorite Oregonian college student arrived to spend the night and we went to our neighbors’ grown-up party for some games. A full and festive weekend!

Mary had a kitty pumpkin  . . . and a bag o’ loot!