Halloween Costume Conundrum

My mother made most, if not all, of our Halloween costumes when we were kids. If she didn't make them, we put them together ourselves. I don't recall ever having a store bought costume. Not once.

I was a clown, a crayon, a witch, a hobo (the same year my sister went as a rich lady), Little Red Riding Hood, and so much more I'm having a hard time remembering.

Peanut has been a frog and Spiderman for his only two Halloweens. Neither of which I made. Both years this made me feel guilty or somehow lacking in the mother gene since this was something fun we did with our mom every year.

This year, peanut is complicating it further by constantly changing his mind. At first, he wanted to be an astronaut, which thrilled the hubby. We found a great costume online that I loved because it was pretty inexpensive and could be used for dress-up all year long. Dress-up isn't something my kid does often, okay, ever, but he does pretend to take off in a rocket ship a lot and a costume for those rainy day spaceship forts made out of pillows would make it a bit more fun, don't you think? And the relief of getting the costume taken care of early while my due date looms on the Halloween horizon? Priceless.

Then, suddenly, out of the blue, he decides he wants to be a train. Great. I really don't care for the Thomas costumes all over the Internet and Target, so I tried to see if it would pass or I could convince him to go back to the astronaut idea (thankfully, I had not ordered it yet). Then it was he wanted to be a race car and daddy would be a race car driver. Then, no, I want to be the race car driver. Then, I want to be a school bus. Then, I want to be a taxi. Then, I want to be a train again.

We obviously need to make a decision soon. At dinner tonight, when he announced that he didn't want to be a train he wanted to be a car - no wait, a train again - I looked at the hubby and said, "I'm just going to make him be a carrot." Why? Because it was just the most random thing that popped in my head.

Peanut retorted: "You can't tell me what I am for Halloween, mommy. I tell myself."

Dude. Who knew the "You can't tell me what to do" thing was going to start so young?

I'm beginning to wish I had inherited the sewing desire, not to mention skill, so I could just whip something up. So the pressure was off a little bit and we could explore some options for costumes together. So we could enjoy that time together working on a special project, just the peanut and me. Maybe it's more nesting - the need to make things, create, solve, make my peanut happy. The problem? Totally uninspired.

Tonight, I'm going to dig deep, channel my mother, tap into the crafty side, go online and see what the heck I can do to come up with a short list for the peanut and try to knock out this costume conundrum by the end of the weekend.

Otherwise, I just won't comb out his bed head that morning and he'll be going as Dennis the Menace.

Other suggestions? Did you wear more home made or store bought costumes as a kid? What about your kids?