This was the first year the kids dressed up, since I’ve never been with-it enough in the past. We don’t celebrate Halloween so much as my husband “guards our home” by appeasing all the ghouls and princesses that ring our bell with handfulls of candy. And if he can play a trick–like pulling my sister’s beauty school mannequin head out of the bag of candy–all the better.
I spent a good chunk of the afternoon putting together simple costumes for Thing 1 and Thing 2 from the Cat in the Hat. I was aware of the PBS cartoon–we’d seen it on vacation–but our main inspiration was from the book we’ve had since E was a baby, which we have memorized and randomly quote from quite often: “you SHOULD not fly KITES in a HOUSE, you should NOT!” and …”we can have lots of good fun that is funny!” For such a simple project, I spent way too much time trying to get the blue maribou boa glued to the beanie hat in such a way that a) it would still fit over the kids’ heads, and b) that the “hair” didn’t end two-thirds of the way down the hat. I was bracing myself for a Pinterest fail, but finally, I had the inspiration to put the hat on something round to stretch it out while I wielded my newly acquired hot glue gun. That chemical smell of melting glue (which I can only suppose is what the warning on the package was referring to when it said “contained chemicals known to cause cancer…” !!!) took me back to many a Girl Scout craft. The only thing I had approximating the size of a child’s head was a smallish pie pumpkin, and though it was a little too big, it worked.
E loved his costume (and he was emphatic that he should be #2); baby brother J was ecstatic for about two minutes, during which we blitzed him with camera flashes trying to get a Calendar Picture. He then turned irate and wanted nothing to do with the hat. We didn’t end up taking the kids trick-or-treating, just handing out candy. But they were excited enough to answer the door and greet the other kids (and way-too-old for trick-or-treating adults) brandishing bags for candy. Pretty early in the night E went off-script and started introducing himself as Super Thing 2, and then saying “Super Thing 2 to the Rescue!” He then demonstrated by zooming around the living room. We definitely picked the right costume.
this is the face J makes when we say, “Smile!”
Three, two, one….
Aaand…. meltdown.
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