As I said in the posts on Halloween Costumes Through the Years, I have lost my Halloween spirit this year. I don’t want to make a costume for anybody. I guess I’ve burned myself out. When the kids asked what they were going to be this year, I told them to go shopping up in the attic, where I keep all of the old costumes (or at least the ones worth saving).
The kids all had a Halloween dance at their school tonight, and although not all kids were going to go in costume, all of mine wanted to. There was a prize for “most creative” costume, and Maia had her eye on that prize.
Maia decided she would resurrect her sandwich costume from a few years ago. I really can’t remember what year she wore this, but I suspect it was that year that India was the mother dog with a box full of puppies, as that seems to be the only year I’m missing photos of the twins’ costumes.
Maia as a sandwich. A costume I made a few years ago that we recycled. I just had to freshen up the paint on the pickle hat and make a new toothpick for it and she was all set.
India remembered that last year, until I got going with my Wizard of Oz theme, I had bought all of the materials to make her a jellyfish costume. While India did attempt to make this herself, I did find myself doing a lot of the work on this costume. Luckily it wasn’t that complicated of a costume to make, and I think it came out really cute.
India the jellyfish. This was a pretty simple costume to make and it looked pretty good. I've seen it done more recently with streamers hung off of a clear umbrella and that looks really great too.
Evan’s costume came about in a funny way. Evan loves candy — probably more than most kids do. In Jackson, Wyoming there’s one of the best candy stores I’ve ever been to. When Evan gets older he plans on buying the current owner out and re-naming it “Evan’s Heaven”. Evan also has an irrational fear of not succeeding in life and becoming homeless. Amanda came across this photo on Pinterest and sent it to me.
I sent the photo to Evan since it was a funny/sad combination of two things he could relate to. Surprisingly, he thought it was a great idea for a Halloween costume. Since it would probably be the easiest costume I’ve ever done, I heartily agreed. He already owned a red plaid shirt and jeans, so the only thing I had to buy was a plain black cap.
Evan's costume.
But then, while I’m searching for the original photo Amanda had sent to me, I come across incredible photos like these of real homeless people and animals.
And it makes me think how fortunate I’ve been in my life. How lucky my children are. And how lucky I feel to be able to give my animals a happy place to live with plenty of food to eat.
But it also makes me realize that Evan’s fears may seem irrational to me, but he has real anxiety issues, and they are very real to him at times. As his mother it’s hard to grasp it, but at 11 years old, my child can lose sleep worrying about things like this.
So I’ll let him wear his costume again on Halloween night. But this costume was never meant to poke fun at the unfortunate homeless people in the world. It was meant to make light of a two personality traits in my son. His love of candy, which is funny, and his anxiety, which is not.
Wow. What started as a nice, lighthearted post sure ended shitty, didn’t it?
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