Welcome to Wellesley. Halloween is a national holiday here. It’s planned out and flyers go around a month prior. It’s epic and indescribable and it’s literally one of the reasons you move to my neighborhood. I’m not kidding. People come from other streets to partake in the best block party Wellesley has to offer followed by the loop parade. I am fortunate to live on “the loop” and I’m jealous of myself when Halloween happens. We start the day with Maia’s preschool parade which literally melts my heart to see her becoming her own little person in her own little world. Much like her sister when we were leaving the festivities all her friends were yelling “bye Maia bye Maia” as a mom that’s what you want – to know your child is fitting in and not feeling alone. In fact that’s all I want at this age. I don’t want her to feel out of place or scared, sad, or alone. I could care less if she knows how to count to 20 right now. That will come in time she’s 3. I just want her heart happy and it seems as though it is. 

Back to Halloween. We Bhangoos love Halloween. It’s my husband’s favorite holiday. He goes all out. He dresses up, usually decorates the outside (construction limited that to actual caution tape this year), he carves pumpkins, puts on Halloween music, drinks pumpkin ale, and hands out candy. He is Mr. Halloween and he caves at whatever the girls want him to dress up as. This year I handmade him a Marlin costume and I was Dory. It’s real serious. That said, there will come a point soon when they don’t want us to dress up or follow them around. In fact, Emma literally did NOT want to trick or treat with us and was crying when trick or treating began and she had no one (although there were hundreds, yes hundreds of children running around from door to door. As you can imagine the crying ended real fast when she got in the mix of a two other girls one from her class and a new friend. Just like that they ran from door to door skipping across the street in sheer delight giggling and yelling “this one next” “No this one next”. Tinkerbell happily sauntered in the back with Marlin and was perfectly content going to each house on her own carefully selecting her candy. Halloween is just pure bliss there’s nothing upsetting about it. Free candy, friends, and the best neighborhood in the world. It’s awesome and I’m grateful and lucky. And it kept me out of my house. Happy Halloween.