Y'all Hush: A Pirate's Life For Me

Hey y'all,

Here's how Halloween went down:

Last year, I was smart. I told Hagen he could wear Laney's old monkey costume, and I didn't buy Laney a costume at all. Instead, I took her dress-up box to a Halloween party and right before the party was supposed to start, I told her to go pick whatever she wanted to wear out of the box. Cost me nothing. Worked like a charm.

This year, because I'm probably down a few million brain cells as a result of my unfortunate neurological issue, I listened to Laney when she BEGGED me at Costco for that mermaid costume, swearing allegiance to that one and only costume idea. "I just want to be a mermaid so bad," she whimpered, with big, wet eyes. So I bought the damn $26 costume. Then we got home and discovered, after taking off the tags, that it didn't quite cover her belly. Laney said, "That's okay by me - I don't like it when things touch my belly, anyway." But no way in hell is any daughter of mine going to trick-or-treat dressed like a redneck mermaid (although I'm filing that idea away for a future costume idea for me). So I was in another $14 for a leotard.

With Hagen, we started asking about a month out: "What do you want to be for Halloween?" At first, it was "No tanks. 'Ont want to rick or reet." We figured he didn't mean it, so we kept asking. Then suddenly, it was "Wanna be a yellow duck." Then, "Wanna be spooky owl." Or "Chicken!" Since those are all feathered fowl, I didn't buy him a costume, figuring I'd wrap him up in all the boas from Laney's dress-up box at the last minute and call it a night.

Laney did the costume parade at her school as a mermaid, as planned.

Then, school was over and 5:30pm rolled around, and I figured I should start thinking about dressing Hagen. So I got out the dress-up trunk and started pitching him ideas. After a few minutes, he settled on, "WANNA BE A PIRATE!" Well, that wasn't really on our list of options, but okay, little dude, you got it. We threw together some of Laney's striped tights and a few pirate toys and some leftovers from Laney's 3rd birthday party, and voila! Insta-pirate. We only had one brief tantrum when Hagen said he didn't want to wear a shirt under the pirate vest - JUST DA VEST - and we tried to calmly explain to him that it was 40 degrees outside and you can't walk the neighborhood in just a vest, "because it's freezing out there and you'll look like a toddler Chippendale, that's why!" He finally came around at "Put on the shirt or you're not getting any candy."

Anyone with more than one child should be able to guess what happened next. Laney took one look at Hagen's fun, easy-to-walk-in pirate outfit and said, "I want to be a pirate, too." Well, fudge. So back into the dress-up trunk we dove, and added some accessories from my closet and some things my mother had left behind on previous trips. And that's how Laney ended up trick-or-treating in a kerchief from the Gap and a scarf from Talbot's and some Anne Klein clip-on earrings.

I told her if anyone asked, she should say she was dressed as "a businesswoman in pirate casual" or just "upscale pirate."