Stahlke Adoption

Some Halloween Musings

Imagine a holiday with costumes, makeup, home decorations, and all the candy you can eat! According to my kids, it's almost better than Christmas!

Try explaining Halloween to a five-year-old child who has never experienced it. Then do so in Ukrainian! Luckily, a few cognates help: Kola's "kostoom" was the "drachon" from Shrek (sewn by Jonathan's sister).

Many Chicago homes sport elaborate decorations for Halloween, many of them quite gruesome. Since Mikola arrived in the United States only two weeks before October 31st, imagine his skewed view of American culture!

Kola learned to trick-or-treat with David and Sarah leading the way. After their first success, he caught on quickly and started running from house to house. After about a block he slowed down just enough to open wrappers and keep his mouth full the whole time. Luckily, mom is known for her large "trash" pockets!

Bittersweet chocolate is my favorite. It's been like that today. I surprised the children (and Jonathan) with Halloween place settings at breakfast: pumpkin mugs and napkins, candy corn candles, and decorated cupcakes from our church's last bake sale. All of these preparations took time away from making lunches, so I scrambled to finish the morning's duties. The children ate without me, and Kola kept asking, "Is Mama going to eat?" When I finally sat down, almost everyone was gone, and I didn't enjoy the meal with them. That was a mother's difficult lesson, and I will do it differently next year! Scrooge is not a Halloween character!

After two hours of trick-or-treating, Kola knew exactly how it worked--ring the doorbell, yell "trick treat," receive some candy, and say "tank yoo." Since houses in our neighborhood all have front steps, I hung back on the sidewalk while Sarah, David, and Kola did their job. In two cases, however, things backfired, but with varying consequences. For some reason, Kola pushed someone's door open instead of knocking first, and the woman inside started yelling at me quite loudly. It was impossible to explain to her that he's five years old and doesn't speak English, so we just went on. About an hour later, we arrived at a house as the occupants were returning from work. As they entered their front door to get some candy, Kola walked right in with them! I have to keep reminding myself that he's very, very new at this.

For three years, Paul has worn a "grim reaper" costume with a long black robe and a scary mask. He updated his black robe this year with a trendy hat and some gaudy rings; now he is a "grim rapper."

Rachel dressed up as an M&M princess. Maybe that's why Mikola always looked first for the yellow bags: peanut M&Ms. He actually held one up when we took a picture of him with his sister. If I can get my act together, I'll bring the camera tomorrow and add the photo to this post.

posted by Stahlkes @ 11:13 AM