Friday, October 30, 2009
Up until last year, when Kid Cool was 5, there was little debate when it came time to choose a Halloween costume. Big sister and Big brother had grown out of dressing up for Halloween a year or so before he was born. And from newborn to 4 years old, Kid Cool had not resisted our homemade creations, ranging from Construction Guy (jeans, plaid shirt, work boots and his toy hard hat) to Robot Boy (boxes painted silver for his body and foil dryer hose for his legs and arms).
Last year, however, the great costume debate I had engaged in with my older kids years before, began again. He wanted to be a particular super hero and asked for a trip to the local party story to buy a costume. I explained how spending money on something he would wear just once didn't make sense and how homemade costumes were so much more fun. I suggested we make our own super hero costume, but he wasn't buying that. He did not want to be a 'boring' super hero, his term for the generic super hero I was proposing.
I turned to my trusty source for creative costume ideas - www.familyfun.go.com.
I love how the site breaks it down by Last Minute Costumes, Animal Costumes, Fantasy Costumes, Sports Costumes, Scary Costumes, and my favorite, Funny Costumes. There is so much variety there - from challenging-to-create to super-easy-to-make.
Since Kid Cool's school has a highly anticipated Halloween Parade on the school grounds in front of the parents and community, his costume needs to function for both the school day and evening trick-or-treating. With the daytime event in mind, his costume had to be simple enough to wear during the school day or at least easy enough for him to put on just before the afternoon parade.
With the promise of face paint for his night-time trick-or-treating, Kid Cool agreed to be a fuzzy bat. I loved that all we needed was a black fleece sweat suit - which he ended up wearing many times after Halloween - some felt for the ears, a basic black umbrella, safety pins and puffy, glow-in-the-dark paint. We outlined the ears with the paint and tacked them on to the hood of the sweat jacket so they were secure, but easy enough to pull off after Halloween. Then we cut the umbrella material away from the frame, applied the puffy paint to the seams and secured the umbrella material (the 'wings') to the back of the hooded sweat jacket. For the final touch we taped hair ties to the inside of the wing tips to slip around both wrists. Check out the instructions here.
This year the costume debate started in earnest as soon as the first day of school arrived. Every time a commercial popped up on TV for some variation of the X-Men Origins Wolverine Claw, Kid Cool would talk about his costume idea. But by the time Halloween rolled around, he spoke less and less about being Wolverine. Turns out I had a little help from school. As Halloween approached, the school began to discourage violent and gory costumes for the school celebration. Kid Cool is a serious believer in following the rules. He knew then that Wolverine was out of bounds. Whether his school had issued the policy or not, he would have never received permission from us to dress up as Wolverine, but now we didn't have to debate the issue.
We moved just before the holiday, and in the midst of cleaning up the garage to prepare for our move, we came across the box of jerseys and pads Kid Cool's dad had collected from his years of coaching Big Brother's football teams.
Kid Cool is eager to start playing football; this fall he had his heart set on joining the only Mighty Mites division in the area. He certainly has the height and build to play at five years, but Dad said to wait one more year. Well today and tomorrow, he can get a head start. Kid Cool left for school today in full Football Guy mode. But only after having me reassure him that the black marks I put under his eyes to mimic the EyeBlack pro players use, wasn't "violence."
Happy Halloween!
-Kid Cool's Mom,
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That's a pretty good list for the family (and Santa) to choose from. Unfortunately, his #1 wish won't be under the tree this year. One more year and perhaps he will be ready for an authentic board from 
Another item not on his list that he'll find under the tree is a Fisher Price TRIO Castle building system. There's the