Bubbles, Glowsticks and Pumpkins Make Magic

This picture accurately describes how I felt when I first arrived at the event. Cold. Dark. Wobbly. Surrounded.

Glow sticks and orange balloons with plastic, pumpkin buckets brimming with spaz-inducing candy were everywhere I looked. Our children marveled at the Halloween treats around them.

My oldest immediately found friends and bolted. We walked aimlessly surveying what this “pumpkin patch” celebration had to offer. Despite my layering, the cold bit at me and my babies but quickly dissipated when laughter overtook it’s chilly tingle. I took a picture of that moment, but swore it should have come with a sound effect; that of a “record scratch” that marked the interruption of my son’s path. He was skipping along happily when the Headless Horseman galloped in front of him. Instantly, he stopped dead in his tracks. {record scratch} Hi-lar-ious!

He recuperated himself as soon as it rode off (still makes me giggle to think about it). My son continued along in his merry quest, finding music and balloons and children playing wherever he took a step.

I guess it doesn’t matter how “old” you think you are. You can play it “cool,” and request mom not kiss or hug you in public. You don’t dare ever cry, unless you’re seriously hurt, because you want to prove how grown up you are. But turn a bubble machine on, and suddenly all of that is out the door. You’re a toddler again, enjoying the air filled with magical, sparkly bubbles.

So much so, you take it upon yourself to try and eat them. Can we say “Dork Nugget?” ‘Cuz that’s what you are, my dear son of mine.

My Baby Dude experienced this flood of bubbles for the first time in his baby life. He watched the sea of soap undulate past him, twinkle as the kids danced around him, popping, singing, reaching, grasping. He pointed his fat finger and popped one and giggled, and that’s all it took. Hooked just like his older brother.

And the boys frolicked. They laughed. They danced. They popped. They played.

My daughters were a little more subtle, they danced, but sat back and drank it all in much more so than the boys did. I think the chill was a factor, too. But nonetheless, despite the Autumn air making its presence very well-known, the five-youngest clung together and smiled their best polished grins for their mom on the obligatory scarecrow and pumpkin decorated hay-stack.