Happy Halloween, Baby
Question: How old were your kids when you started letting them pick out their own Halloween costumes?
Related: I've decided to brand the recent holiday as "Halloween 2010: The Final Insult."
Last year you'll remember Simon chose for Wombat a decidedly non-kid-relevant costume, and although this year, at almost two years old and frighteningly verbal, he (Wombat) was certainly capable of making his own choice, you bet your bippy we weren't about to relinquish control during this, the last year before our child starts demanding to go out in public disguised as a Ninja Turtle or Ming Ming or Justin Bieber (and hopefully then only on Halloween). Thus it was that Simon and I couldn't be more pleased to have controlled the costuming once again, especially since the idea we came up with would only be this funny this year and what a shame it would be to waste it. I mean, WE think it's funny at least. Don't you?
Get it? Because he's not a baby?
If we amused no one but ourselves, at least that's good for something.
(I sewed the bloomers and bib using leftover fabric from last year's birthday banner, and the bonnet is a cheapo foam visor from the craft store, trimmed in lace. The letters are felt attached with WonderUnder and embellished with embroidery thread. The bear slippers are hand-me-downs from my cousin, and the Baby Legs were swag bestowed upon me in an elevator at BlogHer09. Total cost: about $5.)
(The pipe is from my costume: SHElock Holmes.)
When I told my mom we were dressing our tweeschooler (not a toddler, not yet a preschooler?) as a baby, she said, "No you're not! He should be a tiger or a bat or something!" "But it's funny!" I insisted. The consensus seems to be "poor thing," but, come on, you have to admit he does look excruciatingly cute. Also, the bucket full o' candy doesn't lie.
Wombat was a baby for trick-of-treating on Halloween night and also for Simon's work party on Friday afternoon. (What a bunch of nerds those people were. Entrants of the costume contest performed skits backed by elaborate production videos, and the winners were a team that recreated a mite infestation that recently plagued one of the labs. Science!) In addition to that, though, he also had two other costumes: one for daycare and one because my mom sent me the costume she sewed for my genius baby brother in 1983, and I'd like to take this opportunity to point out that dressing your two-year-old as a baby is no more humiliating than dressing your two-year-old as Raggedy Andy, Mom.
(I was four that year and had a matching Raggedy Ann get-up.)
His third costume was perfect for wearing out to brunch, to daycare, and especially to bed, since they're pajamas after all--a gift from Simon's mom.
Add a letterman's jacket you got on sale for fifty cents and you have a football quarterback killed on prom night. Gruesome.
Add a judo gi and you have Daycare Lady's interpretation of my request to take his photo without the robe while he's standing next to all the other kids with their robes a la Johnny from Karate Kid. (It's just as well because he never quite got the hang of the "No, Sensei!" skit we kept rehearsing with him.)
Trick-or-treating itself was perfection. Wombat figured out the process after only one house (and he didn't fuss with his bonnet at all!), and for the past two days he's been jabbering variations of "Knock, knock...and then 'trick-or-treat!'...and then CANDY!" (He thinks "candy" means the tiny bag of mini-pretzels that was the last thing deposited in his bucket; we have no plans to disabuse him of this belief. I, meanwhile, have eaten more candy since Sunday that I have in a year. Simon has had no candy, but he did trick-or-treat with a flask, so there's that.)
(The flask wasn't a prop so much as the scotch inside was.)
(Except it wasn't scotch, it was bourbon.)
The whole parenting part of trick-or-treating was completely surreal. At one point Wombat actually said "thank you" as he was coming back down a walkway, and I was so proud standing there at the end of the driveway like a goddamn grown-up mommy that I felt a physical heart-stretching that made my whole chest ache. As we went door to door in a non-Oakland, non-ghetto neighborhood, other moms and dads called out to us the score of the Giants game, and the ones we passed on the street we acknowledged with mutual nods and smiles, as if any of us could ever be used to this, even after doing it five, six, seven times. When we got back to our friends' house, we sat around the table eating candy and drinking wine and watching the game between interruptions of doorbell rings and the subsequent shrieking stampede of our kids--up past their bedtimes and jacked up on books more than sugar--who found answering the door to give candy as much fun as knocking on doors to get it.
But get it? Yeah, I get it now.
Not slutty at all! Your She-lock Holmes is perfectly acceptable and cute! Meanwhile, this ttp://www.amazon.com/Sherlock-Holmes-Detective-Halloween-Costume/dp/B000I500HU totally isn't.
Well, the football quarterback killed on prom night is my personal fave. HA!
I love your costume and both the baby and Raggedy Andy get-ups are pitch-perfect.
AHHHH! I love this whole thing.
Raven,
If only I had known...
that baby costume is the most hilarious thing i have ever seen. you and simon are hereby deemed the most awesome parents of ALL TIME.
That Simon has it figured out with the flask, man.
What? Not even two is no longer a toddler?! I'm refusing to call my 18-month old a toddler- the baby label stays until two, as far as I'm concerned (don't let my baby grow uppppppp).
He looks cute in any outfit!
You guys are the most fun parents EVER. Raggedy Andy is my favorite--though the NON-BABY dressed as the Baby, smoking a pipe comes in a close second.
Did you go trick or treating in walnut creek??
Until he expresses a preference, dress him for your amusement. Totally loving the baby costume. Also Shelock! Rawr!
He looks so...dignified in that red cap. Like Winston Churchill dressed as Raggedy Andy.