With the Christmas holiday season starting earlier and earlier each year it’s getting increasingly challenging to get into Halloween spirit. The other day I went to my favorite local variety store to grab some Halloween creepiness for the house and what I found was quite amusing. My decorations section was filled with the joy of Christmas! For those of you who read this blog regularly you know that decorating for the Holiday Season is one of my favorite things in the world and I start it immediately after October 31 – but to find the skulls and pumpkins and witches and bats of the the most playful “holiday” (it’s totally not a real holiday) stashed in a corner three weeks before we start watching for the Great Pumpkin seemed a little wack. Granted, I tend to decorate the house for Halloween while listening to Christmas music, but that is besides the point. I listen to Christmas music year round – it makes me smile on those really lousy days when you wish it were the time of the year when everyone was a little nicer and a smidgen happier. Still, on that day I was disappointed.
Then I got a chance to review an actual Halloween music CD and my spirits perked up a bit. As any parent knows Halloween music is a crap shoot mostly, though I recall some really great stuff from my youth. There are no real classics in the genre. Heck, I’m not convinced there is a genre. That said, I was happy to take on Kidz Bop Halloween Party. For those of you who live in a cave, the Kidz Bop concept is to remake popular and old-school music sung by kids, for kids. They’ve been crazy successful with this, and for good reason. In the age of MTV parents need something to remind their kids that they are indeed kids. And Halloween Party does just that.
It opens with a remake of Thriller that I am sure MJ would have thought was well done and then rolls into Disturbia, which is very pop (originally done by Rihanna) and not very disturbing. But where it got me going was with the Ghostbusters, Adams Family and Scooby Doo theme songs and the remakes of 80s coolness A Nightmare on My Street and Somebody’s Watching Me. I also got a kick out of the Spooky Sounds bonus track. But my all time favorite Halloween song (Devs too) stole the show – Monster Mash. It’s timeless and weird and fun. The remaining songs on the 16 track CD, including the energetic I Want Candy, are upbeat kid friendly tunes that I remember fondly from a time that seems to be fading gently from my memory.
With Halloween only two weeks away and our kids growing up too fast, take some time to party a little. And remind your young ones how being a kid is a perfect excuse to be silly and dance fast to Kidz Bop’s version of that oddball ditty Purple People Eater.
My son Jalen is much older than Dev (11 years grown), and being strong Baptist Christians we try not to go all out for Halloween, but I don’t deprive my son of anything that is naturally childlike. This year was the first time we went out with a homemade costume. We decided to use our Indiana Jones hat from his costume worn a few years back, a real nice flannel shirt from the new Shaun White Kids Collection, asome blue jeans, cool suede half boots, a big gold star medal around his neck and a folk guitar to create a Country Music Star. In our neighborhood the residents were a little surprised when they heard “I’m the New Sound of Country Music” and a perfectly tuned strum from his guitar when they asked who he was supposed to be. Our neighborhood is a mix of all races but mostly caucasion. My son is a natural born music lover (just like Dad) and budding musician, so he really had a better outing than he thought he would have without a store bought costume.
My son attends public school now which is a switch for us, so we were used to having him wear his costume to school on Halloween. I had no idea how different things would be, and I’m not referring to the curriculum. My wife and I have been room parents at Jalen’s school since he was in kindergarten, simply beacuase we want to be in close contact at all times. Let me throw in some information right here that may need to be referenced in any future comments I post. Jalen was born with OI (Osteogenesis Imperfecta), often called Brittle Bone Disease and Hirschsprungs disease, which is an intesttinal disorder that means a portion of your colon is either missing or doesn’t work. He had his colon repaired as a baby and we crossed that hurdle, but he has had 16 fractures in 11 short years. Yeah, but I’m not done yet. At age 4 we found out that Jalen suffers from Eosinophilic Esophagitits, which is severe allergies to food or airborn pollutants. As of right now, he is definitely allergic to all foods except pork, potatoes and rice, and we have to be careful about how we prepare those. But I need to make it clear that my son is also just a regular kid. He is just as active, intelligent and normal as the next child and by looking at him, the only difference you might see may be a slight limp, as he has titanium rods in both thighs.
Now, back to the new school, where they are politically correct and not to offend anyone – we celebrated Harvest Day, instead of Halloween. My wife and I (room parents once again) along with another parent organized and threw a real Harvest Day blast for my son’s sixth grade class. Finally, I come to the music that we played throughout the party (which was held from 1PM until the end of the school day), that set it off. The parent that worked with us searches hi and lo for clean versions of songs that her three children (6,10 and 12)like to listen to. I have to admit that my son wouldn’t be able to listen to 95% of those songs unless they were cleaned up. I had my own CD which I created from the KidzBop CD’s my son has, but of course once they heard “Show me how to Dougie” and all their other favorites, it was over. The class partied so hard that they even ate the healthy snacks and fruit cups, along with the other junk food we brought in. My son said they told him we were the ‘flyest’ room parents yet, and I had no problem with my CD being dissed. I’m gonna’ have that parent make me a copy of her CD for the upcoming holiday party.
[…] got my first taste of Kidz Bop for Halloween. We amused ourselves as the ghastly family that we are with some classic and current creepy-crawly […]