Suddenly Scrooge

In spite of my love of Halloween, I have to say that my first preschool Halloween party knocked me to my knees this morning.

This morning at O:Dark-Thirty (when is the TIME CHANGING??) I got Thomas dressed in his pirate costume, put a cute Halloween t-shirt on Emmie so she wouldn't feel left out, and dragged both kids to Thomas's school for his "Fall Festival". I had planned to stay to help out but really had no idea what to expect.

What I got - 50-plus kids cracked out on candy and cookies, one befuddled Thomas and one totally over-stimulated Emmie.

We arrived to find two classes of three-year-olds crammed into a single classroom. The noise was deafening. Shrieks, giggles, sobs and shouts were bouncing off the walls and ceiling and into each other and multiplying and dividing until the decibels were at an illegal level. Emmie immediately clutched the legs of any adult wearing jeans thinking they were me and Thomas put his head on my shoulder to hide his face. Thank GOD the speech therapist asked if she could work wtih Thomas for a bit because I could not have stayed in that room for longer than 5 minutes without wanting to stick a knitting needle into my eye to lobotomize myself.

After speech therapy we went to the playground for candy and games. Gah. The school has both special needs and typically developing kids, and the typical kids definitely had the advantage today. They ran around frantically picking up the candy they found on the ground while I carried Thomas and tried to pry Emmie off my legs. I finally convinced Em to pick up two Reese's cups for me and then we sat down on the sidewalk to watch the other kids spin circles and exhaust their sugar highs.

After carrying my 27 lb son for 30 minutes and watching Emmie get knocked down for the third time I told myself it was time to go. My kids had obviously had all the fun they could possibly stand for the morning and so I put Thomas in his stroller, turned to my terrified, crying daughter to encourage her to walk with me to get our stuff so we could go to the car, and then watched, amazed, as she had a total meltdown at the idea of leaving all the...fun.