The Halloween That Wasn't

After a post about Halloween costumes quite some time ago the matter quickly resolved itself and I never brought it up again. We made some adjustments to the custody schedule, which put Monkey & Peanut with their mom for the holiday. She volunteered to take on costumes and from that point on, Stan and I were done. A few of the other kids in the apartment complex were going as characters from Wizard of Oz so Monkey & Peanut joined. The idea was their mom's but they seemed happy to go along. I was proud of them for embracing costumes that were not pretty by nature. We reminded them of how proud they had been of their costumes the year before (when they designed and created them with very little help) and gently encouraged them to do as much work themselves as they could. Turns out that their mom did almost all of it. It also turns out that it wasn't a big deal to them. Hopefully this will be one of those lessons learned - as much as I value creativity and independent action at my house, it doesn't hurt any of us to let someone else do the work every once in a while.

Puddin' was also easy. I found a $2 bear costume at a consignment sale. It's a zip-up vest with a hood so paired with neutral clothing it was an easy and toddler-appropriate costume. She adores the thing and will sometimes ask for her "bear cos" so she can walk around snuggling it. On Halloween night we took her to a grand total of one house and didn't accept any candy. She's certainly not going to eat the candy, her sisters don't need any more than they've got, and it was raining most of the evening. Puddin' took matters into her own hands, however, and went trick-or-treating in our own candy bin. I made her put it all back, which was met with some very appropriate growls.