Harried Halloween

With falling on Monday this year, some strategizing is in order for the working parent because, at least in my family’s case, trick or treating will probably be well underway by the time we get home. So we have to be ready to hit the ground running in order to secure the most Snickers bars before bedtime.

Here’s how it will shake out for our household: I work downtown and I’m the pick-up parent, so I’ll jump in the car and head north to fetch the kids, and hopefully the I-83 gods will smile on me and there won’t be any hour-long traffic jams to hold me back. If traffic is flowing and I’m lucky, I’ll get to daycare by 5:30 p.m., fingers crossed.

I’ll have packed the car with the kids’ costumes the night before, because the plan we have in mind is pretty selfish: We aren’t going to hand out candy at our house. Instead our front porch light will be off while we go to my in-laws’ nearby neighborhood and take Lucy and Isaac there. To keep the dog from going bazookas home alone while all the interlopers walk our tiny townhouse court (we live on one of those streets where people drive in from the country to trick or treat), my mother-in-law will stop by sometime in the afternoon to pick him up and bring him to her house where we can try to keep a lid on his barking and whining.

So after we get to grandma and grandpa’s house, we’ll offer the children a couple hot dogs and some macaroni and cheese so they have some kind of a sturdy belly base for all the candy they’ll eat later. Next we’ll throw on their costumes and then off we’ll go. Sometime in the middle of all that my husband, whose work day doesn’t end until 6 p.m., will arrive on the scene to take turns holding our daughter’s hand while she goes from house to house with her $1 plastic pumpkin candy carrier from Target. We’ll trade off stroller duties with our son, who will be .

If all goes as planned, we’ll spend more time planning for this holiday than we will actually doing holiday things, but that’s ok. As they say, the devil is in the details, and as long as the kids have a good time – and share their candy with their parents - that’s all that matters.