A Halloween Costume Nightmare

This is an update to my previous post The Halloween Overachiever.

When I last wrote, I was beginning to feel the stress of another Halloween. In fact, I was already doubting whether I could actually pull off my daughter’s costume this year. This stress lasted all the way up until the last second when I finally had to put it on her.

For the last couple of years, the kids and I have traveled down to Virginia to visit my sister to go to “Boo-at-the-Zoo.” Besides having a wonderful time with my younger sister and the kids, it’s a great opportunity for me to give my daughter’s costume a “test run.” Unfortunately, this year, I waited until we were already there to find all the pieces—and there were many. I naively thought that I’d just run out to the local Halloween store and pick up the last few things—but this most definitely was not the case.

This latest creation required an additional skeleton costume, but my daughter refused to buy one straight from the store. She had a vision in her mind of how she wanted to look, and a baggy, pre-made skeleton just wouldn’t do. I figured that if I had no other choice, I could just buy a tight black shirt and tights and paint the skeleton on to them. This was not something I wanted to do, but I could if I had to. It would all come down to timing. We had to be at my sister’s friend’s house by 3:30, so that we could drive into D.C. together.

The morning went something like this:

First Stop (9:30 am): Wal-Mart (around the corner from my sister’s house) We saw online that they carried a tight Halloween costume that would most likely do the trick, but it was sold out.

Second Stop (10:00 am): Springfield Mall (5 minutes further away). We thought that there was a pop-up Halloween store there—but we were wrong. We walked by Claire’s and got excited when we saw a picture of skeleton tights, but they didn’t have her size. I even ran into Spencer’s, just on the off-chance they had it—no luck.

[At this point, it was about 10:30 in the morning, and I could either run around the mall looking for the black shirt and tights, then head off to the craft store for fabric paint OR we could go to a bigger mall twenty minutes away to check out another Claire’s for the tights and the possibility of finding the rest of the costume at the Halloween store there. I was losing hope, but my sister—being a true optimist—believed we would find what we needed.]

Third Stop (11:30): Potomac Mills Mall Besides the fact that Claire’s didn’t have her size again, we walked the entire length of the mall only to discover that the Halloween store was on the opposite end. And this mall was BIG! I broke out in a sweat as I sped through the mall, looking back every few seconds to be sure that my kids could keep up. By the time we reached the Halloween store, I was on the brink of losing my mind. We found one skeleton costume that I begged my daughter to try on to see if it would work. She made me come into the changing room with her, and when she told me that it wasn’t comfortable, I lost it. Not a proud moment. I went on and on and on about how difficult she was, asking myself out loud why I always let her do this—basically completely freaking out. I do give my daughter credit, however, she didn’t get upset by my tirade, and only asked that I keep my voice down so people wouldn’t hear me. I felt terrible. When we walked out of the dressing room, I noticed that they had thigh-high socks with skeleton bones. Out of desperation, I bought them.

My daughter then remembered that she had seen a short-sleeved T-shirt with a skeleton torso at Justice a couple of months ago. They had two left in size 7—my daughter is a 12—but I bought one anyway.

Since she already had skeleton gloves, so the last thing we had to cover up were her arms. Just at that moment, we walked past Aeropostale, which was having a sale on hoodies. Bingo. I bought her a black one—that she could use again—and told her that she would be a trendy skeleton.

We made it back to my sister’s with just enough time to shower and get her ready. And here she is, the final product of all my hard work, my daughter as a Dead Skeleton Fairy.

Another Halloween is almost done, and as much as I don’t want my daughter to grow up too fast, I can’t help but ask myself, at what age do kids finally stop dressing up? But the next question is always, what is she going to be next year . . . ?

This follow-up post was inspired by Mama Kat’s Pretty Much World Famous Writer’s Workshop. Check it out!