Team Cox: Hallowasn't

Well, Halloween was kind of a bust this year, and most of it is my fault. Luckily, the kids are still young enough that I'm pretty sure they didn't notice, so all's well that ends well. But I must admit, I feel a tad guilty anyway. Oh, well. We decided to go to Boston to celebrate the holiday because a friend of mine was having a giant halloween party Saturday night, and also because my parents' favorite holiday is and always has been halloween. Since trick or treating was on a monday (and my new job starts in a few days, marking the end of my weekday flexibility) we decided we'd hit up the halloween party in west roxbury and then trick or treat at my parent's house Monday night. Earlier this month Owen told me he wanted to be a firefighter for halloween. which I was estatic to hear, because we already had 2 fireman hats, and it's a pretty easy costume. I figured I'd make both kids firefighters and that would be that. Of course, while packing the car for our trip to Boston, I remembered the kids toothbrushes, their blankies, my work phone, my computer, a bag of snacks and distractions for the road, two pairs of shoes for each kid and every other damn thing in my house EXCEPT the firefighter costumes. Which is how I ended up in the Watertown Target at about 5pm on Friday afternoon staring at a very, very sparsely hung rack of halloween costumes. The other worst mother in Watertown and I were standing there dejectedly poking through the sad remains of witch costumes missing the hat, a few rumpled and returned costumes which looked worse for the experience, and a wide variety of dog halloween costumes (I spent a while debating how I could get Elias into one of the larger dog pumpkin suits without raising suspicion, but alas, it was not to be). Finally, I found a doctor costume that looked undamaged and said "fits most, ages 3 and up" on the label. perfect! Paging Dr. Cox to OR 3, stat! And that's how this happened:

Clearly, that costume is not designed to fit any 3 year old this side of the NBA. I couldn't figure out what had happened until I looked more closely on the label. Yes, in prominet letters it did say "fits most ages 3 and up", but in much smaller letters on the side of the cardboard was a little letter "M". On the back, I noticed that they had a size chart - XS, S, M, L, XL. Ahah. so in fact, you have to buy the size that corresponds with your kid's age, with XS being 3-4. duh. So the M was for ages 6-8. oh, well. we rolled up the legs and arms and just went with it. Eli ended up with the last Yoda costume in the store, which was pretty much just a robe, because he refused to wear the hat unless I was actively bribing him with candy:

and in fact, he only agreed to wear the robe for about 5 minutes. for some reason he really hated the yoda getup. I have no idea why. We're not big Star Wars fans around here (I've never even seen any of the movies) and so of course neither of my kids know or care who Yoda is, making it overall a flop of a costume. The above pictures are of both kids right before the halloween party. they both took them off immediatley, Owen because his was so huge he couldn't walk or hold anything and Elias because he was just being petulant. nonetheless, I convinced them both to try again to go trick or treating (read: bribed them with candy). Joke's on us, though - my mom's town cancelled trick or treating due to the storm. Luckily, my mom's next door neighbor called and said we could walk over and trick or treat there, and we left my dad at their house so they could go at both houses. This went a little better in the costume department - I mean, what life experience doesn't candy make better, really?

So in the end, it actually ended up fine. neither kid objected to only going to two houses, and I don't think they even noticed anything was amiss. which actually saved us from having 2 big tubs of candy which we wouldn't let the kids eat and then snarf after they went to bed.