The Princess and the fading childhood

My daughter wanted to be a princess for halloween. Any normal mommy and daddy would have just sucked it up, taken her to the halloween store and gotten her a nice princess outfit.

But not us. First, her dad tried to convince her to be a soccer princess for the ward party:


Then for her school, I dressed her up as a Persian princess:




She came home from school and said: Mom, I don't want to be a Persian princess. I want to be a pretty princess (Emphasis on the pretty).

So, when it was time to go trick-or-treating, Jared and I had to suck up our paternalistic gender consciousness and just let the girl be a pretty princess:



And we went Trick-or-treating in Harlem (specifically Astor row and Striver's row--we're not messing around):







And totally scored! I don't know if you can tell by the pictures, but these wonderful people who clearly understand the true spirit of Halloween are giving out full goody bags of candy.



Trick-or-treating at the bodega.

And then, this random man who was just walking on the street put some candy in Cyra's bucket:





And then as we were just walking along, this man stopped us and said he liked Cyra's princess outfit and gave her a DOLLAR BILL!!! I am telling you. Harlem knows how to do Halloween.



Hediyeh with the pretty princess.



I am the Dow. I didn't dress up for trick-or-treating. We went to a nice party at our friend's Marci and Dan's house afterwards. I was in the shower and had the genius idea of being the Dow for Halloween. I would dress all in red, etc. I was giddy making my costume thinking that I was the biggest genius who ever lived for having thought up such an ingenious idea. I show up to the party (of about 20 people) and there was another Dow! Maybe someone told him about my idea?.... Stanton Jones is my new nemesis.



And Lucia was a skunk for three reasons: 1. She cannot speak so she couldn't protest; 2. Rebecca was nice enough to lend us a hand-me-down skunk costume and 3. She actually stinks. My beloved Lucia is one of the sweatiest sleepers in the world. She lives in my closet and when I open the door in the morning a waft of pungent baby sweat odor sweeps across the room. It makes my eyes water and wakes Jared up if he's not already (I write in superlative, but only to make a truthful point).



When Cyra saw Lucia's costume, she suggested that we put her on the road. (In San Francisco, we saw a dead skunk in the road and we told Cyra that he was just hanging out there).