Halloween, supersized

Halloween used to be a day, one day out of the year. Now, it’s a season. Like Christmas, it’s become super sized, and the celebration begins right after school starts.

I’m not complaining (for once). Actually, this is A-OK with me, because I am basically a Halloween junkie. You’re talking to someone who – up until my storage area was invaded by a family of mice -- boasted an extensive wig collection, no less than four different kinds of boas and enough make-up to keep all of Brooklyn glammed up for the month of October. And no, I’m not a drag queen. I like dress-up.

As a kid, I was the Queen of Halloween, since Nonnie was a professional seamstress and a semi-professional martyr who liked to do pro-bono sewing work in the form of devising frilly, poofy, lacey princess-y gowns for me to sport. One year, I was Scarlet O-Hara and my dad built a hoop skirt out of wire hangers. That was one time where my mother was the opposite of Joan Crawford: “More wire hangers!!! We need MORE WIRE HANGERS!!!”

My children have, of course, followed suit. Except that they, sophisticated souls that they are, have a preference for the dark and macabre elements of the holiday, and like to get spooky. Non-spooky attire is not allowed on Halloween. Evil reigns. That’s just how we roll.

Primo will be – wait for it – a Plants vs Zombies Zombie. This was a last-minute switch-up due to the fact that he is currently in the throes of a raging obsession with the game and also the fact that his first costume idea, to be the Headless Horseman, with no head, turned out to be impractical since not only could he not see anything or play with his friends, his mouth would be covered and he could not eat candy. This is, of course, a dealbreaker. So zombie it is.

When people ask Sec what she’s going to be, she says. “A stepmother/”

This doesn’t make immediate sense to many people, so I’ve been clarifying: “She means an evil stepmother.”

But when I told that to a mom this morning at drop-off, I realized that maybe it sounded like I had something against stepmothers, so I hastened to add, “I mean, THE evil stepmother, from Snow White.” That would have been sufficient clarification but instead I went on, “Not like, any stepmother. Some are very nice.”

That, too, would have been more than enough clarification and potentially even a little funny. But then I felt compelled to add more, in the event that the mom I was talking to was, in fact, somebody’s stepmother: “I don’t have a problem with stepmothers. Divorce happens. I mean, it’s not my problem, it’s the Brothers Grimm’s.”

Then I shut up.

So, yeah, Sec’s gonna be the evil Stepmother, in a costume her great grandmother -- masterful seamstress - fashioned just for her, replete with magic mirror and poison apple. The apple’s not really poison. I wouldn’t let my kid play with a poison apple. OK, now I’m going to stop clarifying and find some medication for my logorrhea.

Now that's one kick-ass princess

Primo’s friend came over for a playdate recently and the boys were playing Spiderman (not his all-time favorite game, but hey, he dabbles in it, because who doesn’t like the web-throwing boy wonder?). Trouble was, neither of the boys wanted to play Venom. Then Seconda darted into their room, growled at the boys with her fingers curled into claw position in that patented Seconda way, and Primo’s pal had an a-ha moment:

“Let Seconda be Venom!” he exclaimed.

Seconda happily agreed and did, I think, a stand-up job or chasing the boys around the apartment screeching with delight and throwing herself atop of them with awful abandon.

Tough as nails, and often just as dangerous to play with. My girl may be a princess, ut she’s a princess that’ll disembowel if you cross her. Betty Friedan, I think, would be proud.

The Show Must Go On

Once you tell the kids you’re going to the circus, there’s no turning back. And so it was that on Sunday, despite the fact that I was weak and achy and my throat felt like it was on fire, when it was circus-time, I had to rally. The children were besides themselves with excitement. The show must go on! And besides, it wasn’t like I had a fever or anything.

So to Lincoln Center we headed. As soon as they saw the Big Top, the children became deranged with desire for concessions. Seconda asked the woman at the Will Call booth for popcorn – it was like she couldn’t account for what she did or said under the intoxicating influence of that butter smell. She didn’t care who gave her the freaking popcorn, but she needed some baaaad.

With my three-year old holding a tub of popcorn about twice as large as her head, and Primo oh-so-tenderly clutching his cotton candy, we settled in for the show, Dance On!.

And here is why I dragged my sorry butt all the way to Lincoln Center – if I’m going to be sick, I figured, why not be sick watching the CIRCUS!!!! Frankly, one of the best fringe benefits of having kids is that I have an excuse to see the circus again. It was incredible, and I mean that in the literal sense of the word, of course – you literally could not believe what you were seeing.

My favorite acts were the contortionists (they don’t even look like human beings when they get into their groove, just like a mass of boneless creatures from outer space) and the insanely hot Strong Man acrobat who could basically perform any feat of strength you can think of. One-handed handstand atop a tiny handrest atop a three-foot pole atop a six-foot podium? No problem. The guy took a pair of these pimped-out stilts and proceeded to do a handstand on them and walk himself ON HIS HANDS out of the tent.

This was the point at which Primo started going crazy with excitement. I don’t know whether it was the massive amounts of sugar and butter or just his appreciation for the sublime but he was yelling like a madman, so loudly I actually worried it would disturb the rest of the cheering, yelling audience members:

“BRAVO!!! BRAVO!! BRAVISSIMO!!”

“I CAN”T BELIEVE IT!!!

“ITS AMAZING!”

“NO NO, DON”T TELL ME HE”S GOING TO STAND ON HIS HEAD!!!”

Seconda loved the clowns. Who could blame her? Those Big Apple Circus clowns are – remember you’re hearing from a clown professional now – fantastic. Sec’s favorite is Grandma the Clown, with her white pancake makeup, who delivered all the most beloved bits -- spit takes, pratfalls, butt jokes. But there was a new clown this year, who really stole our hearts. He did all the hat tricks and some insanely intricate cup juggling but what I really loved what his clown persona – sweet and guileless in his too-short pants and pink suitcase full of tricks.

There were also goats riding on ponies’ backs and this amazing lasso act from China where this girl stood on a guy’s head WITH ONE FOOT because she was using the other foot to twirl a lasso! With her toes! If you can’t find a good time witnessing that, you can’t find a good time doing anything.

As soon as the show was over, I realized I was in the throes of a raging fever. I shivered all the way home and have been sleeping ever since, waking onto to pop Tynelol and moan. But I’ll say this – if you have to go down, watching the circus is a pretty good way to go.

The Big Apple Circus is in Lincoln Center from now through Jan 9. You can get discount tickets, up to $25 OFF EACH TICKET, by using the promo code MOMMY11 at http://bigapplecircus.org/mommy11LC.aspx

Happy Circusing. I hope you don't get a fever.

Avant-Guard Pinocchio

How many avant-guard productions of Pinocchio has your child taken in? None? NONE, you say? No fear, you can correct that this weekend, at Immediate Medium's production of The Assassins Chase Pinocchio. I took Primo to some of the workshops they conducted over the summer as part of the show's creation and its pretty exciting stuff -- super-smart, funny, thought-provoking, not your ordinary fairytale theater.

Saturday, October 23, 2010
12:00pm and 7:00pm at IRT
http://www.immediatemedium.org/

Children free/Adults $10
Seniors, students and adults bringing a child $5
For reservations, email info@immediatemedium.org

Here is some info from IM about the show:
Conceived as an avant-garde performance piece for children and adults, The Assassins Chase Pinocchio combines the surreal world of Carlo Collodi's 1883 coming-of-age tale "The Adventures of Pinocchio" with the formal techniques of experimental theater to examine the process of growing up and the parts of our child selves we have "assassinated" in our... mad dash to become "real boys." Inspired by the read-along story albums of the late 1970s and early 1980s, the piece uses live video, found objects, masks, gibberish and psychedelic original music
to fracture and expand the oral storytelling tradition into an immersive multidisciplinary experience for young and old

Please join us as we make our way into and out of the belly of the Terrible Shark. It's Pinocchio as you've never seen it before. Appropriate for kids ages 4 to 104.

The circus is coming (and I have a discount code)

I know I sometimes seem a little snarky, a tad jaded and acerbic. But, as I continually remind my husband, I happen to be blessed with an extra-ordinary amount of joie de vivre. Sure, I complain a lot, but I also can get uber-excited about stuff and today what I’m excited about is . . . .

Going to the circus!!!

Yes, this weekend I’m attending a Mom Blogger event at the one, the only, Big Apple Circus! The kids are over the moon, I am jazzed (do I really need to remind you that I have professional circus arts experience with a specialty in contortion), and David had agreed to join and put on a happy circus face even though he is generally averse to any destination which involves crowds of screaming children.

We took the kids last year for the first time and they were positively breathless (of course it might have been from the cotton candy sugar-high). The juggling! The flying trapeze! The clowns! Seconda was totally obsessed with Grandma the clown and continues to wonder whether it was a girl or a boy or a real grandma or what. Death-defying feats and gender bending, all under the same big top -- who doesn’t love it?

This year, I hear the show, Dance On!, will include unicyclists and lasso twirlers from China, Mongolian contortionists, gravity-defying, pole-climbing athletes from Kenya, and a juggernaut juggler from Ethiopia (yeah, I’m been waiting patiently for a chance to use the word juggernaut and now, thanks to that juggler, I’ve done it).

The Big Apple Circus blows into Lincoln Center today and if you, like me, can not rest until you’ve gotten your hands on some tickets, allow me to help you SAVE MONEY and SEE THE GREATEST FREAKING CIRCUS. Here’s a promo code you can use to get up to $25 off each ticket:

Online: http://bigapplecircus.org/mommy11LC.aspx and submit the code MOMMY11 in the Promotional Codes box in the lower left of the page.

By Phone: Call 888-541-3750 and mention code MOMMY11

Woohoo! Yeehaw! Yippe Kay-freaking- ay!

Having your lentils taken out

“Mommy!” exclaimed Primo first thing this morning, “Did you know Daddy got his lentils taken out?”

“His what?”

“His LENTILS!”

“What’s lentils? Do I have lentils? Is there blood in them? I don’t want them to TAKE MY LENTILS!!!” yelled Seconda.

“What are you talking about?” I replied blearily, “What are lentils?”

“In your body,” Primo explained, pointing to his throat.

And then I had the sweet suffusion of affection that comes when your growing-up-so-fast child says something which reminds you he’s still a babe in the woods, and you’re so relieved to hear it, because it means he won’t be sneaking off to raves or skipping school to smoke pot anytime soon.

“You mean your tonsils,” I said, “Daddy got his tonsils taken out?”

“Yeah, that’s it,” he said, “Can you believe it?”

It was a good morning.

First Lost Tooth

Primo lost his first tooth.

Pause for applause and fanfare.

Yes, it’s very exciting. Particularly because we were about to pay about 400 buckaroos to get it pulled. You see, his new, permanent tooth had actually already grown in, fully, behind the baby tooth. My son had two teeth in the place where one should be. It was kind of freaky but of course we just acted like it was cool and no big deal, because we didn't want to give the kid a complex. Still and all, that extra tooth had to come out, and the dentist said the sooner the better. He also said it’d cost $200 per tooth, plus anther $200 for nitrus oxide, which he didn’t recommend for all kids, but would probably be a good idea for a child who started to panic when the dentist turned on the light overhead to look in his mouth.

“If he freaked out about the light, what the hell is he going to do when he sees a needle coming directly towards his mouth?” I asked David, “We need the nitrus.”

So imagine my reaction when a few days before the appointment, the tooth started to get really wiggly. We began a relentless wiggling campaign, and two days before the appointment, I informed Primo that it was time to move into “Heavy-Duty” wiggling.

“Let’s get sub-gingival!” I exclaimed. A few years ago, a dentist said this to me and it has become one of my favorite phrases to employ, though, as you can imagine, I rarely get the opportunity.

My heavy-duty wiggling strategy worked, and later that day, after dinner, he was wiggling when suddenly he just pulled his tooth right out of his mouth. No force was required. He just popped it out, like a Lego.

“I think my tooth fell out!”

I doubted him, of course, because the thing he was holding between his fingers was so tiny, so terribly minute, there was no way it would be a human tooth. A mouse tooth perhaps, or a beetle tooth, but not nearly big enough for a human boy’s mouth.

Just goes to show you how adept I am at estimating size (sorry, husband). It was of course, his tiny, darling $400 tooth. Never was such jubilation heard over the loss of a tooth. My pride and sentimentality were mixed with the sound of “Cha Ching!” depositing my money right back in my checking account. It was lovely.

The Tooth Fairy was ready to compensate Primo very generously for his first tooth, but then her husband talked some sense into her, and explained that as the kid has 20 something teeth, it was best to establish a reasonable precedent. The next morning, Primo was delighted to find $3 in a pouch under his pillow.

Only problem is, the X-ray the dentist took showed that another permanent tooth is about to break out behind the tooth next-door. So we’ve had to re-allocate the funds again, and begin our wiggling work. When my grandmother found out how much it costs to pull a tooth, she offered to take care of it with a little string and a heavy door. Now THAT’s getting sub-gingival.