Sunday, October 31, 2010

Surviving Halloween #5

Halloween takes on a whole new meaning when you have small kids. You get to subject them to your own costume ideas and preferences, for the first couple of years, anyway. And, if you love Halloween as much as my husband and I do, there's nothing more exciting than that. I mean, this is coming from parents who actually considered decorating our son's nursery to the theme of "The Nightmare Before Christmas". We eventually came to our senses; admittedly skeletons and corpses (cute and cartoon-ish as they are) might not have been the wisest choice in newborn decor.

But, for Ciaran's very first Halloween, we wanted a mixture of cute and scary, hence the "Baby Frankenstein" number we rigged up for his 7th month on the planet. I have to give Tony full credit for making the whole outfit, from the head piece, the black jacket he actually sewed, and the platform shoes on his wee infant feet. Don't worry, the green tint on his face is totally photoshopped.


The next year, I turned all soft and picked out this little Dalmatian costume. Tony was a bit disappointed that it wasn't more spooky, but the Libra in me just had to balance things out. Plus, Ciaran got a lot of use out of the puppy dog ears, wearing them well into spring of the next year. It was adorable, I tell you!


Year three was when Mom and Dad had to relent and give in to Ciaran's costume wishes. We made the unfortunate choice of bringing him to the costume store, where he took one look at the Viking hat and sword and decided he was going to be a little warrior. But, by the time Halloween night rolled around, he wouldn't have anything to do with this costume and one of the pumpkins ended up wearing the helmet.



And last year was the year of the ladybug, when he became ridiculously obsessed with the red and black insect, so it was only appropriate that he donned this costume.


As for this Halloween, well, let's just say we're still (2 hours before trick or treating commences, nonetheless), trying to iron out the costume details. You see, Ciaran really wanted to be a house. Yes, a house. So, we finally got it figured out just how we'd make said house costume, and then a week ago he changed his mind. He wanted to be some kind of winged cat creature. So back to the costume store we went. Again, very important advice to parents: Do not bring your child to the costume store once they decide on a costume. There are waaay too many options. Go there yourself, grab the costume and Bob's your uncle. But, no, we didn't do that. Back to square one. *Sigh*. I'll keep you posted.

On another note, I here's one of my fave family Halloween pictures circa 1984 - my cousin Jackie the vampire and my brother Jeff as a tiny Mr. T!


Happy Halloween to all!!

9 comments:

Unknown said...

HaHA....I love it!!

Meesh said...

haha i pity the fool!

Cheryl said...

Sawyer insisted on this costume that has the Scream mask, and then you can pump "blood" through it. It was the One, the ONLY costume he wanted. He wore the mask for 3.1 seconds last night...

Stephanie said...

Seriously couldn't get past the baby Frankenstein! Too cute:)

Sandra said...

You're hilarious! You went from Baby Frankenstein to a fricken lady bug! That kid is never going to forgive you. Oh he may have thought it was cute then, but wait for the verbal abuse when he sees that pic as a teenager!
Did I mention you're hilarious?

Unknown said...

Baby Frankenstein is too cute! What happened to the house??? I was looking forward to seeing how the costume turned out! :(

Heligirl said...

Good advice about taking the kids to the costume store. I'm dying to hear how it went. And that flashback photo is hilarious! I'm so glad all my old Halloween shots are in a box somewhere in my mom's garage. There is no way they'll pop up any time soon.

Anonymous said...

I now know exactly what I'm going to be next year for Halloween, a little Mr. T!

Alexandra said...

Oh, my gosh!!

That Frankenstein pic would totally sell out as a Halloween card.

You could retire.

Call Hallmark now.

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