Several weeks before Halloween, Chris was putting the boys to bed and decided to tell them a made up story. This is not unusual for Chris; he always ends his bedtime stories with a story that he has made up, usually involving Rocco and Adriane and snow and other things that he likes to talk about. In this story, he talked about a villain that took children's toys and about the hero, Spiderman, who returned the toys safely to everyone. Even though the message was intended to be fairly straight forward, this is not at all how the story came across to the boys. Somehow all the boys heard was that Spiderman was going to take their toys. I was not home the night Chris told this story, and when I returned home, the very first thing Chris said to me was "Um, we may have a problem with Spiderman". Sure enough, the next morning, no sooner were the boys' eyes open than out of their mouths came the words "Spiderman took our toys". Despite endlessly reassuring them that Spiderman does not take kids' toys, the inevitable happened: Brady declared that he no longer wanted to be Spiderman. At this point, he did not know I already owned a Spiderman costume so I tried showing it to him so he could see how cool he could look, but that did not work. He just cried and told me "No WANT to be Spiderman, Spiderman takes my toys".
A few days later Brady told me that he wanted to be Geo from Umizoomi (a character from an older cartoon that we downloaded for our plane rides, for those of you who do not know who he is). I was not worried about making Brady's Geo costume because I still had plenty of time before the big day. I amassed my Umizoomi supplies and set to work making Brady a costume. To celebrate Halloween, we bought tickets to our local Children's Museum Halloween celebration. In my eyes, this was a perfect way to celebrate the Holiday. We got to play in the museum late in the evening (with Chris which is novel for the boys) and wear costumes. They had lots of "treats" available for the boys like books and pencils etc. It was a great way to make the holiday exciting for toddlers who do yet know Halloween is candy-centric event. We also had a Halloween party the next day so our weekend was full of Halloween festivities.
I was very excited to show the boys what they were going to be wear for Halloween. Unfortunately as soon as Brody saw Brady's Geo costume, he wanted nothing to do with this "boring" baseball costume. To be fair, Brody does "pretend" to be a baseball player everyday. He wears all sorts of "baseball equipment" when we play ball outside. Seeing Brady's new threads (i.e. felt hot-glued to clothing- fancy!!!!!) must have really seemed super special compared to "just" being a baseball player. Even when all decked out in his new baseball uniform, he kept saying "No WANT to be baseball player, I want to be Geo.". Since I could not whip up another costume on the spot, I did the next best thing. I asked if he wanted to be Spiderman. Surprisingly, he said yes!
After the boys were dressed in their costumes, Chris and I left them alone in their room so we could finish getting ready to leave. I could hear them talking to each other and this is what I heard:
Brady: "D- you Spiderman?"
Brody: "Yeah, I Spiderman!"
Brady: "You gonna take our toys?"
Brody: "Yes"
Brady: "Oh"
I could not bear how sad Brody looked when he told me he wanted to be Geo too, so before our second party, I stayed up late and made a second Geo costume. Brody was thrilled when he saw it and both boys wore their Geo costumes to the party and on Halloween Day. They looked so darn cute (if I do say so myself). I learned some valuable lessons about toddlers this Halloween. You can be sure we will do things a bit differently next year! Happy Halloween!
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