Halloween Redux and a Poke in the Eye

For anyone who ever doubted me, I did succeed at making the damn Halloween costume for Kate. I can’t say that I figured it out on my own. After my overwhelmed pattern-opening moment, I called a friend, Melissa, who is crafty with a loom, a sewing machine, and God knows what all else. Over the course of three tutorials in which I covered her house with tufts of craft fur like lava covered Pompei, she deftly guided me through the often utterly incomprehensible directions, and even made great time-saving suggestions to boot. (Don’t sew on the arms, just have her wear a black shirt underneath.)

Why is it two women who don’t even know each other super well can work during the days, take care of their toddlers through their dinners and bedtime routines, and still summon the energy to successfully–and even pleasantly–work together on a fairly complex crafty project, when a young guy can’t even teach his girlfriend how to ski without all hell breaking loose?

At any rate, the costume was adorable! Kate was a starlet–well, a skunk really, but a dazzling one! At the neighborhood Halloween parade Mark kept nudging me so I wouldn’t miss it when the other parents cooed over the cuteness of it all. (And frankly Mark being proud of my maternal craftiness was all the flattery I needed to consider going another round with this home-sewn costume concept next year.)

In a more recent turn of events, nanny Shelly informed me one evening last week that at the park Kate was playing with a baby and was so excited. “She really wants one.” Somewhere in the amazingly-good but not perfect English that Shelly speaks I misconstrued her to mean that Kate wanted a sibling, not a baby DOLL.

So once I sorted my way through an initially suprising suggestion that turned out to be a quite reasonable one, we went to Target. I resisted the urge to wait until I found the ultimate sweet and cute and not plastic-tacky doll for Kate and just get her one, since by the time she is 27 and I find one that I think is worthy of being her first doll, she probably won’t care.

What was funny was the day we went to Target I’d met Shelly and Kate at a sushi place for lunch. When I walked into the restaurant, Kate was so excited to see me she started squealing. Then squealing seemed to continue to appeal to her after she’d gotten over the fun-ness of having me there, she sqealed more and louder. So Shelly said “Shhhh, Katie.”

Well, at Target when I handed her her soon-to-be First Official Doll, the first thing she did was look at it gravely and say, “Shhhh.” Finally Kate can manage someone else’s behavior instead of being the low man on the totem pole. I’m sure that’s fun for her.

The second noteworthy thing she did upon receipt of the new doll–after the requisite hugging and kissing of it–was take both her thembs and bear down on one of its eyeballs. It had those old-school kind of eyes with lids that open and close and eyelashes. It’s one of her ways of giving the doll love: hug it, call it “Baaaaby!”, give it kisses, and gouge at its eyes.

Yesterday I went into her toy box to get some toys I’d stowed away for a while so she’d think they were all fresh and new when she got to play with them again. I found an angel doll that Mark’s stepdad’s mother had gotten Kate. I handed it to her and she grabbed it with her wild-eyed happy look. “BABY? Baaaaby!” Then she went for the eyes.

Let’s just hope that these little Equus-like episodes are all a harmless expression of a baby’s bodily exploration, and we’re not raising a little future Abu Ghraib prison guard here. Sheesh.