Carnaval
So I may have shared this before but I grew up in the south of Holland so "carnival" was a thing every year. I can even say that every year on the 11th of the 11th (November 11th) the season would start where they'd start building the carnival trucks for months and months. As a child, I remember that my uncle and aunt would be in the construction hall of their carnival association several evenings of the week, up until the point where the clock was ticking to get things done in time and soon every evening would be spent in this hall.
It was tradition
That when the association would be almost done, they'd have their Sunday celebration for the members and family and show off what they created and worked on for months in a row. Us kids, we loved to come these Sundays because we knew there would be sandwiches with typical Dutch croquettes and frikandellen. Not many children would turn down an opportunity to eat these lol.
Growing up
I started to lose interest in the whole carnival season because I simply hate the typical Dutch music that belongs with carnival and only took these 4 days as an opportunity to go out and party in my favourite discotheque. That would mean getting dressed up but still enjoy my own kind of music and dance the night away.
Rhythm, yeah baby!
When I say I don't like the music, I'm not talking about Rio de Janeiro type of music, btw. I love love love those, these drums and the rhythm, that's totally my jam! But Dutch carnival is nothing like that. It's on my bucket list to experience that at least once in my life, so maybe one day..
Carnival for kids
I think it's fun to see that even when we lived in Hungary and now in Spain, kids also have some type of carnival celebration usually. Although my daughter's outfit this year was officially her Halloween outfit, I made sure to buy it in a size that it would still be a good fit for carnival, and so I didn't have to hunt for a new outfit a few months later.
Long search
I did a thorough research because tons of outfits are of such shitty quality that I think it's not even worth 5 euros, let alone 20 or 25, and I refuse to pay for that junk that doesn't even last a day. I wanted her to have something nice and so I browsed on probably hundreds of ads with at first glance selling the same dress, but upon reviewing all the reviews, often they deliver a bad replica of the image they use in the ad. I could not see another Wednesday dress at some point and pulled the trigger on this one.
A full package including the dress, a wig, a cute little bag and of course, Thing!
The package did not disappoint
I was happy with the quality (unlike many other pictures I saw before ordering!) and the dress has a nice fit. Even the wig is quite ok, even though it's been used ones and kept sliding off constantly the first time, we managed to make it fit better this time by adjusting her hair. The kid has just as thick hair as I always had and struggled with holding up my hair for a wig when dressing up, it's a nightmare lol. But with this outfit, the wig was needed!
Cold!
Now I don't know any better than celebrating carnival and having rain, wind or storm! I always hated the fact that we had to wait for hours until the parade started and we were all underdressed in our carnivals clothes which were definitely not suitable for Dutch winters. Hating that so much, I really try to avoid my kid from having these same experiences, it really helps that we live in sunny Spain lol. But even last week it was a bit too chilly for the dress only and she had to take a vest for the morning until the sun appeared later. This was the only vest that I could give her, lol. I don't have that many wintery vest outfits as it's usually too warm for here.
Excitement
It's always so nice to see how a child can be so excited to dress up and allowed to wear that special outfit. It has remained in the closet from Halloween until this one day at school. Sadly the parades were cancelled due to the storm so she was allowed to keep it on that day and now it went back in the closet already.
Pictures
I always need to have a few pictures for memories and she had a hard time staying serious without looking scary lol. I had to share these few dress up moments and the one where she burst in laughter as she could not hold her face normal without laughing, haha.
Do they celebrate Carnival where you live? Is it a 4 day celebration there as we know it in Holland?