Halloween I

Around 5PM, we realised that we were about to miss Ara's Very First Halloween!! So, like all good parents, we left the baby with the nanny, and rushed to the store to buy tiny candies to help rot the teeth of the neighborhood kids. All the while we brainstormed about how we could dress poor Ara up to welcome the ghoulish young'uns. "A Lima Bean?" "A Businessman??" "A Fake Burberry Bag??". We finally settled on the one thing I felt I could make in a reasonable amount of time (10 mins): A flower. Awwwwww!! So, after some frantic sewing, and some yelps from Ara (who had NOT napped well that afternoon), we received our first spooky callers: a surgeon, a bat, a princess, about 5 pirates, and a "japanese girl". Ara was so freaked out that she puked on her petals. Time for bed! Later, after our little flower had wilted for the evening, more "grown up" and judicious spirits graced our hallowed .. um .. stairwell: a rocker (not right for our band, most probably), captain jack sparrow (as androgynous as the original), a very laid back pair of Scream ghosts who showed definite lack of commitment to murdering teens, but who knew to take the toblerone over the fruit&nut, and a couple of nerdy and ungrateful ghosts who surveyed our chocolate offerings and opted to decline. Definitely the best visitor of the night was a tiny little boy from a neighboring communist apartment block. He was obviously in a pillow case, with a face cut out, and ruffles at the bottom. After much prodding, and many sadistic demands and manipulative bargains from us such as "tell us what you are, and we'll give you candy!" his mother saved the day: "I'm a Running Pillow!", she said, while the little one nodded solemnly. Of COURSE you are darling! It made sense once she'd said it.