"I want to be what I want to be."

Last year Ella had a huge fascination with all things spooky. I think Halloween is probably her favorite holiday. This year as all the orange and black began appearing in the stores she was just as excited as last year.

A few weeks ago we had a few minutes to waste at Wal-Mart so we stopped by the Halloween section. On one side of the aisle were all the girl costumes. I pointed out the cute ladybugs and the many princesses. But all Ella was interested in were the spooky and scary boy costumes. She told me repeatedly "I want to be what I want to be! And what I want to be is a scary face."

Ella is truly a girl. She is in love with pink and fluffy dress and accessories. So though I get that she loves Halloween, I couldn't figure out why she would choose the creepy over all the girly stuff that she loves. Then Ella explained it to me. She thinks the point of dressing up is to scare all the spookiness of Halloween away. And of course that could only be accomplished by being scary herself.

A few days later we had a friend over to play. She and Ella began discussing what they might be for Halloween and her friend said that she wanted to be a fairy princess. Ella gave her a look of disgust and said "Princesses don't scare anything away."