Costumes

Asking Toby what he wants to be for Halloween is the last thing I should do the week before Halloween.  Yet there I was yesterday morning, blurting the question very open-endedly as if the world were his costume oyster.

Costumes stump me every year.  Maybe because I wait until the last minute, or maybe because Toby loves anything unorthodox and absurd.   Two years ago he was a railroad crossing.  I striped the arms of a white shirt with a red Sharpie for the “gates” and drew a big black “X” on the chest.  It looked okay, but relied heavily on his yelling of “ding, ding, ding” for anyone to get it. 

Last year he wanted to be a trash truck, but I convinced him to be a Dalmatian instead. I don’t think he understood the terms of our deal because on Halloween night he hopped around panting and barking, but also stopped at every driveway to dump an invisible garbage bin before going to the door.  By dark his friends were half a mile ahead and I was more than a little grumpy.

This year he of course wanted to be a trash truck again.  I countered with trash man, because seriously.  He looked under-impressed and made me dig his dog suit out of the closet for a spin, which as it turns out, is so small now that he couldn’t pull the hood over his head without causing an unbelievably large wedgie. He wore it all morning anyway, rubbing his head on my leg and pretending to lick stuff off the carpet.  Charlie looked kind of scared, and I wondered if it would be wrong to accidentally mail the dog suit to China.

Thankfully I found a pair of Greg’s brown gloves and slid them over Toby’s hands to see if they looked at all trashman-ish.  They did, though he waved his hands around very non-trashman-ishly while he deliberated.  “Glubs are awesome,” he finally said.

Awesome, indeed.  They are so awesome that I had to locate a pair for Charlie too who moped noisily after his brother saying, “I yant gwubs! Char-Char gwubs!”

Glubs.  The key to any good costume.  Who knew?

Tags: Motherhood