All Hallows' Eve 2009

Saturday afternoon we attended our parish fall carnival, which happened to be held this year on the eve of All Saints' Day. John was extremely excited as we loaded into the van and told him we were going to a carnival. Then I asked him, "What is a carnival?" He said, "I not know!"

While we were standing in line to buy tickets, John began dancing to the music. Dancing--it's serious business.


We started out by decorating John's own construction worker's hard hat and visiting the bake sale, which were big hits.

John was determined to play in an inflatable slide: it was inflatable like those "jump houses" so popular these days. First the children walked or crawled through an inflatable tube at least 10 feet long, then they ascended an enclosed, inflatable ladder up to a slide. I strongly suspected John would freak out inside the tunnel and didn't want to pay four tickets for that experience, but he convinced me. The tube had clear plastic windows along it so I would run along to each window and wave at him but, alas, John freaked out as I suspected and ended up running out the entrance.


John stared longingly at this carnival ride and swore to me that he wanted to ride it. After the tube incident, I almost wanted to call his bluff just to be able to say, "I told you so," but I decided that was too petulant of me considering John isn't even yet three.

The rest of the "carvinal" (as John calls it) was more fun. John played carnival games: basketball, Plinko, a smash-the-hammer-and-knock-the-frog-into-the-bucket game, and the bean bag toss.


John was the smartest kid at that last game: he just walked right up to the hole and dropped the bean bags inside.

I sewed costumes for the children: St. Benedict and St. Scholastica! For those of you who know how little of a seamstress I am, you'll be as amazed as I am that I navigated a McCall's pattern for a tunic (with hood for John, without for Mary) and created my own scapulars and veil. Sometimes I'd come to a sentence in the pattern that was like Greek to me and I'd decide that it probably didn't matter that much, so I'd skip it! Yet the costumes turned out well enough. For once in my life, perfection was not the enemy of good.

I made John's in a size 4, so he fits it now but it is big with room to grow.

I made Mary's in a size 2, which turned out to be a very big size 2, so then I basted the hem and cuffs four inches. This one should fit her for a couple of years!

On Saturday evening, we went to a local parish's All Saints' Day eve party. I was aware throughout that some people (including me, in my earlier life) would have found this party to be incredibly square and ridiculous--but Chris and I and all the kids loved it! The evening began with all the kids sitting down, with the priests in attendance, and praying one decade of the Rosary.

A happy nun!

Then we played the Guess-the-Saint game! The kids broke into two groups, with our group being for children six years and under. That included at least two children old enough to be self-conscious but young enough to start weeping as soon as it was their turn to be looked at. Thankfully, John is still so young that he is clueless about such things, so he and Mary stood up for their turn without incident. Despite Chris thinking that I chose esoteric saints, the kids guessed immediately when they heard the clues that these saints were siblings, maybe twins, and the man founded a religious order.

St. Benedict loving on his sister

The party provided at least a dozen fantastic, Catholic-themed carnival games. I wish I had taken notes on all of them because they were so unusual and neat. Above John rolled a pumpkin through a maze.

Yes, you are reading that bean bag toss correctly!

At each game, the kids won a piece of candy as a prize, which I quickly learned that I had to confiscate from John. This was our first year doing any kind of "trick or treating" and possibly John's first exposure to typical manufactured candies (although he's no stranger to sugar), and I was naively unprepared as a parent. I didn't even think to bring a bag to hold all the candy! Of course, a two-year-old wants to eat every piece of candy immediately and does not understand that he will be receiving more, more than he could possibly eat, and that there is no scarcity. At first I was letting him eat candy after candy until I realized I would have to say 'no more.' (See, seriously naive.) John ended up eating something like two small cookies and the smallest size of Tootsie Roll at the afternoon carnival and half a Reese's peanut butter cup, the smallest size of Tootsie Roll, half a fun size KitKat bar, and a few M&Ms at the evening party. While that is a lot of junk for a 30-pound child, it was an otherwise excellent eating day (for John), in that he actually ate proper (again, by the standards we hold for him) breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Yet I wonder if the candy really upset him somehow because his overnight was horrible. He woke all night long, weeping inconsolably for extended periods and unable to articulate why. Have any other moms seen this reaction in their kids?