Oh Hallows' Hell

I have this sort of love-hate relationship with Halloween.  Actually, I love Halloween, but the costume part...not so much.  Admittedly, I love love love seeing all the adorable munchkins become even more adorable as lions and train conductors and superheroes.  But the whole thinking of costumes, planning costumes, creating costumes...not my fave.  First off, creativity and craftiness are not my strong suits.  So when Munchkin A says he wants to be a turtle for Halloween 2009, I panic and have to call Ms. Crafty for help.  Or when Munchkin B says he wants to be a plane for Halloween 2011, I flat out say no and offer a pilot as a compromise.  But more than the pressure of costume creating, it's the endless negotiating and haggling and indecision over costumes that begins when that first parents' magazine or Oriental Trading Company catalog with a costume-clad toddler on the cover lands in our mailbox (August), and persists until November 1st.  During that two-month period, the boys are each going to "definitely be" at least a hundred different things.  And I'll be completely honest here - I do not help matters in the least.  Not only do I repeatedly throw out ideas for costumes that I think would be hilarious or cute or unique, only to backpedal a few minutes later when I realize the implementation issues involved, but I add to the chaos by vetoing a good half of the boys' ideas.  I have this crazy set of "rules" that I'm not even sure where or when I picked up - no masks, no all-black attire, no guns, no commercial characters....  Now the first several have at least some basis in safety.  But the commercial characters?  Yeah, that's just my own luny parenting bias.  I don't know what it is about me and Disney/Pixar/Nintendo/Nickelodeon but we just don't get along.  Or let me rephrase that - we get along perfectly well when I'm trying to make dinner and they're entertaining my child, but when my child wants to plaster his clothes/room/self with their characters, I shudder.  I had to exercise serious restraint when Ethan insisted upon a Cars lunchbox this year, imploring him to reconsider the adorable brand-free robot lunchbox instead.  But the allure of Lightning McQueen won out, and a Cars lunchbox he has.  So you can imagine how excited I am when Ethan wants to be Mario (the kid has never even touched a Nintendo product - these marketers are damn savvy!) or Adam wants to be Dora (yup, Dora).    The tough part is, I don't really have a good reason why these characters are taboo.  I don't even know myself why I have such a problem with my kids dressing up as TV or movie characters - heck, some of my best costumes have had roots in popular culture.  Maybe it's me trying to hold onto their babyhood, and realizing at the same time that the days of dressing them as little dinosaurs and lion cubs are over.  Maybe it's caring too much about what others think, and worrying that people will think my kids watch way too much TV, or play video games all day.  When I write this all down, I can fully recognize the extent of my neuroses here, and realize I should have just let the boys pick their costumes, all by themselves, with no input from their crazy mother who's clearly got some issues.  Instead, here we are, 17 days from Halloween, and we've finally decided on a costume that satisfies Mommy's rules.  No masks, no weapons, no dark drapey clothes, completely and utterly generic!  And here's the irony - the boys finally settled on costumes with which I couldn't find one thing to argue, not one thing, other than the fact that I absolutely, monumentally DESPISE (and am terrified of) them - my boys have chosen to be clowns.  Sigh.  Perhaps I should have embraced Mario and Dora when I had the chance.

And while I do lament parts of this whole Halloween season, I do love me some fall fun.  Here we are at Pumpkin Valley Farm yesterday, one of those quintessential autumn days when you just want to be outside riding a cow train, getting lost in a corn maze, and jumping on a giant bounce pillow.