She just wants to have fun on Halloween but runs into opposition

by Adair Lara

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I sometimes think that no one gets Halloween, except me and my grandkids. Those are my daughter’s girls: Ryan, 5 years old, who plans to dress this year as a witch, or a go-go girl, and Maggie, 3, who will be a witch, unless she’s a dragon. (At least, these have been the latest choices in an ongoing discussion dating back to March.)

And now it’s here.

One of the more inconvenient things about having grandkids is that their parents get to make all the rules. At no time is this more bothersome than at Halloween. I complained to my daughter Morgan, “You act as if they’re your kids.” And I suppose a neutral observer might say they are. But the girls and I share a respect for subversion and candy, not to mention rubber skeletons left casually on people’s beds, so Halloween is the perfect time for us to bond.

As a grandmother, I feel hemmed in the rest of the year by restrictions on what the grandkids are allowed to wear and eat and do, but on Halloween, it's: "You want to wear the dragon suit to school with a hula skirt and cowboy boots? Looks like a warm outfit to me, kiddo!" Oh, and did I mention that I consider the entire month of October to be Halloween?

The only thing that gets in the way of our fun is, as usual, everybody else, in ways small and large. For example, my husband, Bill, whom the kids call Pepe (pronounced PEH-PAY), keeps hiding our electronic witch's head from Walgreen's. It plays Santana’s “Evil Ways” when you press a button on its nose, as Maggie does whenever the song stops. Maggie also carries the witch in front of her like a mask, so Pepe has to pretend to be scared of it about 90 times a day, until he begs me to take the girl to another room so he can finish making dinner. Later, we find the witch's head hidden under the couch cushions, again.

And even though it's plainly October, the girls' parents keep dressing them in regular, boring clothes, so when they arrive at my house they immediately change into whatever filmy, candy-colored costumes I’ve picked up at Goodwill. Two girls in school clothes arrived here the other day, but a go-go girl and a dragon went home, the latter incinerating the landscape as she stomped to the car. “She works for me,” the go-go girl said of the dragon, which is one of those statements you just have to take on faith.

So I am always running out of costumes. Fortunately, I have plenty of other stuff in my Halloween trunk, but get no takers for the pirate outfit, coon hat, or cowboy gear, as the girls are willing to be anything on Halloween, except, seemingly, a boy.

As the girls' Halloween consultant, I’m also severely hampered this year by the kind of costumes they are allowed to choose, at least for their school parties. At Maggie’s preschool — it's "progressive," of course — kids are not allowed to wear anything violent, or anything based on media characters. That means no Doras, no SpongeBobs — and no witches.

So they can pretty much be a flower or a bunny.

When I heard this news, I dutifully bought flamingo and duck costumes for the girls' school events. (I'd already purchased witch costumes for them, which are now at Daddy's or Mommy’s house.) Then, last weekend, the girls, their dad, and I were all at the Boo at the Zoo party at our local zoo, and I showed the girls a real flamingo. “See, how they stand on one leg in that interesting way?” I said.

They both looked at the flamingo, and decided on the spot that they were definitely going to be witches this year.

Starting right after their school parties.
 

For Halloween crafts you make with your grandchildren, click here. Elsewhere on Grandparents.com, find recipes for perfect Halloween cookies from celebrity baker Sarabeth Levine, find out about Halloween happenings across the country, learn about four great Halloween gadgets, and read about what else grandmother Adair Lara has learned from her granddaughters.