Smell My Feet, Give Me Something Good to Eat
This was Abbie’s second Halloween. Last year we dressed her in a jaguar costume filled with enough pink to ensure that her brothers will never wear it, and paraded her around the neighbors’ and the nearest mall for Trick or Treat.
She collected tons of candy, which Ellie and I enjoyed for several days. It’s not like we hogged everything for ourselves; we still have the stickers she collected last year, and they’re hers as soon as she’s old enough to play with them.
This year we dressed her in something a little different: A tiger, but this one was in realistic colors, not the nature-violating color scheme of last year’s jaguar outfit.
We didn’t originally want to dress her as a cat in consecutive years. After spending hours or at least many minutes searching for the perfect costume, we bought an adorable pumpkin costume for Abbie. It met our two main costume criteria, specifically it was the right size and it was unisex enough for a brother could wear it eventually. As soon as we brought it home I took it off the hanger and clipped off the tags so she could try it on and we could see how achingly cute she looked. Sadly, I quickly discovered that costumes use a different sizing scheme and run much smaller than normal clothes. While most clothes use the child’s birthday to measure sizes,* costumes apparently use the conception date. Therefore the pumpkin costume that claimed to be for ages 1-2 is actually suitable for 3 to 15-month-olds, which will be perfect for a brother next year because without the tags that I just cut off there’s no way I could return it.
The next day I went to a different store and grabbed the first unisex costume I found suitable for a child 26 months past conception, which happened to be the tiger outfit. It’s size 2T, which is two whole sizes beyond every other article of clothing that currently fits her. The pants and sleeves are a little long, but she’s practically bursting out of the body (note that the costume is unzipped). Perhaps the costume industry uses foreign children as their size models, unaware that here in America, everything is bigger, from houses to burgers to Snickers to Kit Kats to Peanut Butter Cups to White Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups to those Inside Out Peanut Butter Cups with the peanut butter on the outside and chocolate on the inside. Mmm…
Oh glorious Halloween candy. I bought ours a few weeks ago because I found a good deal on the stuff. Obviously their plot was to hook people on the stuff in early October, and jack up the prices in late October when people have to restock since a lot of people can’t. I outsmarted the stores by freezing my candy as soon as I brought it home, because who would want to eat a Peanut Butter Cup when it’s frozen solid, even though the rock hard exterior simply prevents the chocolate from melting until it hits your tongue, then the ice surrenders to your warmth, spilling its creamy goodness throughout your mouth until you think Heaven can’t possibly taste this chocolately, and that’s when the peanut butter starts to make presence known, combining its velvety decadence with the previously presiding chocolate to create a taste that… ahem.
We went Trick or Treating at the zoo on Sunday. This was the day before Halloween, which is Beggar’s Night, or the official night for Trick or Treating in Des Moines. Long ago the Powers That Be in Des Moines decided to hold Trick or Treating on the night before Halloween to reduce the pranks and general unruliness that occurs on Halloween. Plus, the Powers That Be in Des Moines are stupid. Trick or Treating at the zoo, “Night Eyes” as it’s called, was something of a disappointment. Everybody cost the same rate to enter. Fortunately they didn’t catch the two viable fetuses Ellie is carrying, but they still made us pay the full rate for Abbie who’s still young enough to only remember potentially scarring events when her therapist asks about them in a few years. Inside, the animals, who are kind of the whole purpose for a zoo’s existence, had been mostly replace by advertisers giving out treats ranging from good (Butterfingers, but far too few of them) to bad (cans of Mountain Dew Pitch Black? The people handing out Tootsie Rolls probably spent more on treats than those clearance aisle scroungers).
Realizing that Beggar’s Night is stupid, our neighborhood declared Trick or Treating would be on Halloween. This gave us a chance to empty our thawed stock of Halloween candy while disposing of the crummiest candy collected at Night Eyes (i.e. Almond Joys). I had planned to give away most of our candy that night, but all of our neighbors planned the same thing. Abbie came home with a bag full of candy at least equivalent to the volume we gave away. Combine her bagful with our leftover Halloween candy and the extra bags we had to buy the day after Halloween because it was clearanced, and we’re sitting on a pile of tooth-rotting stomachaches. We have Hershey Bars and M&M’s and Skittles and Nerds and Runts and many flavors of suckers. Somehow we’ll just have to cope.
No, wait. We’re out of Runts.
*Abbie is currently 17-months-old, putting her in the 12-18 month size and almost ready to burst into the 18-24 month size.
She collected tons of candy, which Ellie and I enjoyed for several days. It’s not like we hogged everything for ourselves; we still have the stickers she collected last year, and they’re hers as soon as she’s old enough to play with them.
This year we dressed her in something a little different: A tiger, but this one was in realistic colors, not the nature-violating color scheme of last year’s jaguar outfit.
We didn’t originally want to dress her as a cat in consecutive years. After spending hours or at least many minutes searching for the perfect costume, we bought an adorable pumpkin costume for Abbie. It met our two main costume criteria, specifically it was the right size and it was unisex enough for a brother could wear it eventually. As soon as we brought it home I took it off the hanger and clipped off the tags so she could try it on and we could see how achingly cute she looked. Sadly, I quickly discovered that costumes use a different sizing scheme and run much smaller than normal clothes. While most clothes use the child’s birthday to measure sizes,* costumes apparently use the conception date. Therefore the pumpkin costume that claimed to be for ages 1-2 is actually suitable for 3 to 15-month-olds, which will be perfect for a brother next year because without the tags that I just cut off there’s no way I could return it.
The next day I went to a different store and grabbed the first unisex costume I found suitable for a child 26 months past conception, which happened to be the tiger outfit. It’s size 2T, which is two whole sizes beyond every other article of clothing that currently fits her. The pants and sleeves are a little long, but she’s practically bursting out of the body (note that the costume is unzipped). Perhaps the costume industry uses foreign children as their size models, unaware that here in America, everything is bigger, from houses to burgers to Snickers to Kit Kats to Peanut Butter Cups to White Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups to those Inside Out Peanut Butter Cups with the peanut butter on the outside and chocolate on the inside. Mmm…
Oh glorious Halloween candy. I bought ours a few weeks ago because I found a good deal on the stuff. Obviously their plot was to hook people on the stuff in early October, and jack up the prices in late October when people have to restock since a lot of people can’t. I outsmarted the stores by freezing my candy as soon as I brought it home, because who would want to eat a Peanut Butter Cup when it’s frozen solid, even though the rock hard exterior simply prevents the chocolate from melting until it hits your tongue, then the ice surrenders to your warmth, spilling its creamy goodness throughout your mouth until you think Heaven can’t possibly taste this chocolately, and that’s when the peanut butter starts to make presence known, combining its velvety decadence with the previously presiding chocolate to create a taste that… ahem.
We went Trick or Treating at the zoo on Sunday. This was the day before Halloween, which is Beggar’s Night, or the official night for Trick or Treating in Des Moines. Long ago the Powers That Be in Des Moines decided to hold Trick or Treating on the night before Halloween to reduce the pranks and general unruliness that occurs on Halloween. Plus, the Powers That Be in Des Moines are stupid. Trick or Treating at the zoo, “Night Eyes” as it’s called, was something of a disappointment. Everybody cost the same rate to enter. Fortunately they didn’t catch the two viable fetuses Ellie is carrying, but they still made us pay the full rate for Abbie who’s still young enough to only remember potentially scarring events when her therapist asks about them in a few years. Inside, the animals, who are kind of the whole purpose for a zoo’s existence, had been mostly replace by advertisers giving out treats ranging from good (Butterfingers, but far too few of them) to bad (cans of Mountain Dew Pitch Black? The people handing out Tootsie Rolls probably spent more on treats than those clearance aisle scroungers).
Realizing that Beggar’s Night is stupid, our neighborhood declared Trick or Treating would be on Halloween. This gave us a chance to empty our thawed stock of Halloween candy while disposing of the crummiest candy collected at Night Eyes (i.e. Almond Joys). I had planned to give away most of our candy that night, but all of our neighbors planned the same thing. Abbie came home with a bag full of candy at least equivalent to the volume we gave away. Combine her bagful with our leftover Halloween candy and the extra bags we had to buy the day after Halloween because it was clearanced, and we’re sitting on a pile of tooth-rotting stomachaches. We have Hershey Bars and M&M’s and Skittles and Nerds and Runts and many flavors of suckers. Somehow we’ll just have to cope.
No, wait. We’re out of Runts.
*Abbie is currently 17-months-old, putting her in the 12-18 month size and almost ready to burst into the 18-24 month size.
posted by Matt at
9:57 PM
1 Comments:
Freezing the candy. Hmmm. I'll have to try that next year!
By
Childsplayx2, at 3:18 AM
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