Ever since the birth of my daughter, it's been a race between my mother-in-law and I to see who can get the Halloween costume for the kid first.
She actually won the first year, but I trumped her with the "I gave birth" card. I actually use that card every year because I like dressing up little kids in cute little outfits, but I have to admit that what she does bring to the table makes for good dress up play clothes, and so I'm not about to tell her she can't buy any Halloween costumes for her grandchildren.
Last year she bought this really cute pumpkin outfit for the baby. Which would have actually been perfect because the 4 year old was determined to be a pumpkin and so they would have matched. Except that the pumpkin outfit she got for the baby ended up being for a preemie and wouldn't even fit on my big baby boy's big baby foot. So we ended up using the preemie pumpkin costume for the 4 year old's doll and I ended up dressing big baby boy as a bouncing bumble bee.
This year, I really wanted to come up with something creative and I thought I had found it on the cover of one of my favorite catalogs. There was this little girl dressed as Little Red Riding Hood and next to her was a toddler dressed as The Big Bad Wolf. It was almost too cute to be believed and I actually squealed when I saw it and said to my husband, "Look how adorable! We have to do this!" And my husband smiled and said, "Yes, very cute", but his eyes said "not so much" or "how much is this going to set me back?" or "try again" or something.
What sealed the deal with a big fat "no!" was my daughter looking at the cover and saying, "but I don't want to be Little Red Riding Hood." I tried reasoning with her, but you can only make Little Red Riding Hood look so cool before giving in and admitting you've been trumped. So I finally said, "Well, what do you want to be?"
"I want to be Rapunzel."
"Great! We already have a Rapunzel dress. That makes it easy!"
"No. I want THAT Rapunzel dress," and she pointed to the picture she had found in the catalog of Rapunzel.
"I'm not buying you a Rapunzel dress when we already have one that you fit into. That's silly."
It's a good thing that I didn't buy the dress because since then she has announced she wants to be a cowboy, a bear, and a rollie pollie bug.
"A rollie pollie bug? How are you going to be that?"
She climbed into her plastic crawl tunnel and said, "Look! I'm a rollie pollie bug."
I thought, "Well, at least I won't have to buy a costume."
Finally I told her whether she liked it or not she was going to be Rapunzel.
With that settled, I could concentrate on the toddler.
Enter a trip to Costco. I actually entertained the idea of dressing up the toddler like "Pascal", but the idea of dressing my son up like a lizard just doesn't appeal to me.
"Look at these costumes for Ian!" I told her, pointing to the costume display.
She did indeed think they were cute as well and had pulled out a monkey costume for me to look at. I pulled out a cow for her to look at.
We looked at each other's findings and she said, "I like the monkey."
I said, "I like the cow."
And I had a flash of what shopping with her when she's a teenager is going to be like.
We ended up settling on the monkey because I figured I could always put my foot down next year. And when she's a teenager and asks me if she can get that cute what-ever-it-is that shows too much skin and I say no, and then she says "you never let me get anything." I can pull out the monkey costume card.
"That's not true. You got to dress up your brother like a monkey for Halloween. I wanted the cow."
