It's T-minus seven days and counting until the all-important midterm elections. You may wonder what I, committed Democrat and semi-political blogger, am doing to ensure the best possible outcome. Well, I've done lit drops, gone to fundraisers, lent my name to newspaper ads, and plan to go to the Tester-Lindeen rally this weekend. But today, mostly, I'm trying to force my son into a pirate costume.
A good two months ago, Connery told me what he wanted to be for Halloween. It was not a pirate. It was, and I'm quoting here, a "whale-bunny". How in the world I was supposed to reconcile those two concepts, especially given my lack of sewing machine, is really beyond me. So I assumed he would forget about the whale-bunny and be fine with what we had planned, a dog costume that he had basically stolen from another little boy because he was so in love with it. (He wore it home from a play-date and the mom in question was nice enough to gift it to us because her son had outgrown it.) But when we started discussing Halloween over the weekend, Connery informed us that he had no desire to be a dog and demanded some other costume, though he at least did not expect me to come up with a mythical Monstro-Easter-Bunny hybrid.
Since it was the weekend before Halloween, our selection was, shall we say, limited. Still, at Costco, we came across a forgotten rack of costumes containing a few suitable costumes in Connery's size. He immediately spied the pirate costume and informed us that that was the costume he had to have. It made sense, really, since he's obsessed with Pirates of Penzance and How I Became a Pirate and all other things piratical. We asked him several times if he was sure that he wanted to be a pirate and liked the costume. He assured us that he did, indeed, predicting his imminent demise should we fail to buy him that costume at that precise moment.
When we got it home, however, he refused to try it on. He said it was scary and that he hated it, evincing particular horror over the striped pants. We threatened to return it to Costco or give it to some other little boy who wanted to be a pirate and he cried. So we put it away and hoped that he would change his mind come the big day. We needed to try it on last night so that I could hem the pants, and another brouhaha ensued: crying, whining, curling up in the fetal position--and that was just Chip and me. In the bathtub later, Chip action sold him into wearing the costume on Halloween. But this morning, all bets were off. He didn't like the fetching faux-raggedy hem I had so skillfully cut, and he remained afraid of his pirate costume.
We threatened him with being a dog, and he chose that. Unfortunately, it seems said backup costume is now too small for the boy who grew four and a half inches last year. Avast, ye scurvy dog costume! So we were back to the pirate, a costume that immediately provoked tears. I have no idea how this standoff will resolve itself. At his preschool, they are supposed to dress up and have a costume parade through the adjoining workplace. We'll see how that turns out. Will the promise of booty outweigh his entirely rational rejection of the chosen-unchosen costume? Hard to say. All I know is, next year I'm crafting the whale-bunny.
Update: Guess who was first in line to change into his costume at preschool? Yup. Apparently booty trumps fear every time. And can I just say that he looked wicked cute?