The Better to Eat You With, My Dear

Happy Halloween! We just got back from Trick or Treating and I am all full of giddy, wholesome fun (and candy. Many, many candy.)

If I know you guys and I think I do, you have been on tenterhooks waiting to see what our family costume was.

I KNOW. I can’t believe I made you wait so long either! It’s just that my nephew wasn’t going to just swindle himself out of that tiny bag of Cheetos, so, I mean, priorities.

(Cheetos always get #1 priority in this house.)

Alright, without any further ado, our only-slightly-embarrassing family costume, beginning with the best part:

Oh hi, Little Red Riding Won’t Keep Her Hood On! Aren’t you just adorable!

Say, do you have ridiculous parents kicking around here in cringeworthy costumes that will come back to haunt them in years to come? Oh you DO?

Helloooo!

Guys, those glasses were $3, and I powdered my hair with cornstarch.

Now I’m not saying that the Grandma look is my best look, but what I am saying is that when I go grey (and I may or may not be already waging a war against 3-4 pesky strands every few weeks over here, so at this point it’s not if, it’s when) I don’t think I’ll look half bad.

I might even be so bold as to call myself…a silver fox?

JUST SAYING.

One more?

And here’s a funny story that gives a little peep into the dynamics of my marriage. I like to plan things, especially festivites. So I planned Olive’s birthday forever, I spent a few weeks thinking of this costume and gathering bits and pieces for it, and throughout all the stages of the planning Adam’s attitude can be summed up as nonchalant. He’s not disinterested per se, but he definitely isn’t in there tossing ideas around or anything.

Then, EVERY TIME. Every single time, at the last second he gets SUPER into it. Like a little too into it for my liking. And then all of a sudden he is all up in my business trying to help me make this cake I have been thinking about for three months and he is just measuring almond flour and stirring chocolate and sifting things and he doesn’t even know the plan! Or he decides that if he is going to be a wolf, there’s no way he’s just going to let his wife draw a nose on him with an old eyeliner pencil goddammit. 

No, if Adam’s going to dress up as a wolf he’s going to do it RIGHT.

So he gets onto the good old Internets and finds a pattern and prints it and goes to town with scissors and a mandarin orange box and he crafts himself that gorgeous snout you see above. He covered it with the same fabric I used to make the ears, coloured the nose on with a sharpie and used hockey tape to cover the teeth.

And despite my bossy bossing, he was right and damn does it look cute! Way better than if we just had some wild-eyed kitten looking thing following us around with a smudged nose.

Olive loved trick or treating. I felt slightly ashamed because every so often the person putting the candy into Olive’s little basket would stand up and I would look at them and our eyes would meet and it was silently understood that this child, this adorable Little Red Riding Hood would never be actually eating any of that candy. It was slightly awkward so that’s when you brightly shout “Thank you! Happy Halloween!” and rush to the next house, letting your shame be tamped down by the ever-growing mound of too-small chocolate bars nestled in the basket amongst the red checkered fabric.

By the fifth or sixth house she started yelling as soon as we started up the walkway, trying to imitate her cousins as they called trick or treat! And by the tenth house I swear she actually said “Tiikoooteeet” and I have my five-year old nephew as a witness and thank god because no one else heard it.  We couldn’t get her to replicate it after that, but it was pretty cool.

(Not cool enough to let her have any of her candy, but I did let her chew on the wrappers and that’s sort of the same?)

Finally, we carved pumpkins last night and in an ode to her first real Halloween, the first one where she isn’t a three-week old lump in my arms, we carved her a very classic sort of pumpkin, and decked it out with teeth just like hers. Two bottom teeth, two front teeth, and one and a half side teeth (seriously what are those called? The ones beside the front ones?)

Happy Halloween!