Ava’s daycare has a Fall Festival for all the children and, of course, all the parents are not only invited but also asked to participate. They do these parent-kid interactive activities in some form or another at least once a month, however I’m convinced it’s mainly an excuse for the parents to take their kids home early. Because, really, who is going to go for half an hour at 3:30PM and then leave their kid there?
I typically don’t go to any of these. J usually represents for our family, in part because he is already off work about that time but also because if I’m around Ava wants to hang with me and refuses to venture more than 2 feet from my side. That makes it kind of hard for her to do certain toddler oriented activities.
But because no one else in her room volunteered to help with the Fall Festival, J and I both got roped in to this one. And honestly, I also went because I wanted to see Ava and all of her friends in their costumes. Come on, they’re two. The cuteness was overwhelming.
So J and I show up in costume. And yes, we were the only parents to do so. Score one for us. I was dressed as a 4-star general (inside joke at work) and J was a non-scary vampire-y count sort of creature.
Ava was a leopard-y sort of cat for costume #2 of 4. It was sort of a leotard thing with a tulle skirt and she was getting dressed when we got there. Of course as soon as she got said leotard on nature called and we had to do the whole thing in reverse, followed by hand washing, which makes her absolutely giddy (SOAP! WATER!).
Except this was about the happiest she was for the rest of our time there.
The concept of the festival is that the kids played a different game in every room and then got to trick or treat from the daycare workers. After all the games were done they did a parade down the little strip mall adjacent to her daycare, trick-or-treating from the merchants while showing off their costumes.
Remember I said Ava wouldn’t go more than 2 feet away from me? Yeah, make that about 6 inches. If I attempted to pry her from my arms then there was much screaming and a downright refusal to participate. Note that she is not visible in either of the following two photos:
That’s because she was glued to me. I tried to put her down. Really I did. I tried to encourage her to play with the others. I even tried to bribe her with candy.
Nope.
Not only did we have crying every single time her feet touched the ground we also had an out and out meltdown. It was the worst we’ve ever had in public and all precipitated by me trying to coax her into actually having fun. Suffice it to say that it was a teeny bit embarrassing but thankfully all the other parents around us were also raising two year olds so I figured it wasn’t anything they hadn’t seen or experienced already themselves.
She did finally trick or treat one daycare worker who had stickers and hopped down out of my arms just in time for the costume parade by the shops…only to scare the hell out of me when she broke and ran for the parking lot. Seriously, I don’t think I’ve ever been that frightened because she took off in the blink of an eye and was gone before I could grab her. I’m still a little miffed that not one other parent reached out and blocked her on the way into traffic but I darted out and caught her (in boots with heels, no less) before she made it too far. I gotta tell you though, after a great big bear hug of relief that she hadn’t been squished by a car, that little girl got plunked right down on the curb and got a very stern talking to in front of everyone.
We (thankfully) wrapped it up shortly thereafter and headed home for dinner and her monthly birthday (just a little late this month) photo shoot.
Costume #3 was put into use at her request. This time she was a butterfly.
Accompanying her was her friend ~ Sam the Bumblebee.
Which she (and we) thought was hilarious.
Sam? Not so much. But he came around…eventually. Or at least he became resigned to the indignity of owners who dress their dogs and kid up as insects for fun.
