Too Spooky for Me

One of my strongest points of reference for little boys prior to Jack is my little brother D.  While he's a grown-up now, there are so many things about Jack that remind me about my time with my brother.  For example:  the way he plays and the things that make him giggle or cry.

When my brother was about Jack's age, he convinced my mom that he wanted to be Spooky the Ghost for Halloween.  For those of you who don't know, Spooky the Ghost is Casper the Ghost's cousin, a tough guy with a derby hat, freckles and a Brooklyn accent.  My mom cut a bed sheet, bought a derby hat and some white and black face-paint.  She carefully painted his face white and gave him Spooky's trademark freckles and little black nose.  When she showed D his finished costume in the mirror he panicked and started to cry.  Eventually she calmed him down and convinced him to go out Trick or Treating...before bed there were more tears when she washed off the make-up because he wanted to stay Spooky.

Comic book image of Spooky courtesy of Wikipedia.

I am not sure Jack "gets" Halloween yet.  Last year he certainly didn't.  We set out in the rain with Jack dressed up in his elephant costume (Molly as Red Riding Hood) and knocked on the first door.  A little boy answered.  Jack immediately tried to push past the boy and run into the house.  We wouldn't let him, so he threw a tantrum.  It took us nearly five minutes of him laying on the cold wet sidewalk blocking other trick or treaters until we were able to calm him down and convince him to go the next house.  At house number two he pushed past the person who answered the door and sprinted down their hallway as fast as he could.  At that point we decided that the naughty little elephant wasn't ready for Halloween and took him home to give out candy instead.   We took shifts with Molly, who spent the entire night relishing compliments on her costume while she collected treats.

This year isn't looking much better.  We have been out twice and ransacked the dress-up box at my folks' place with no success.  Jack refuses to wear anything on his head or over top of his regular clothes and has rejected all of our costume suggestions.  Molly selected her costume immediately.  She's going to be a dragon and can't wait - after we selected her costume at Value Village she spent the rest of our outing hiding behind racks and jumping out at people roaring.  I'm going to be researching costumes that don't require anything over your regular clothes or involving hats or masks.  I'm open to ideas....

To read my tips on surviving a rainy Halloween click here

To read about my failed attempts at coordinating twin costumes click here

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