Halloween

Once again, dear readers, I give you Esmé’s thoughts as communicated to me via mental telepathy.

Hello TSCBlog readers,  Ezzy here! I wanted to write to all of you about a very important topic. It is one regarding which we have received several questions. I have wanted to address these questions for some time, however, Maman is being a bit of a slacker and has, as usual, left decisions (and action) on this topic to the very last minute. So, I have taken matters into my own hands. And today we will discuss the ever important topic: Halloween and what I, Esmé, will dress as for Halloween (in the spirit of being honest up front, I’m totally not going to tell you that).

I am a big fan of Halloween. It’s not the candy (Maman eats all of that, trust me). And it isn’t the trick-or-treaters (I mean, really, who knocks on a door at night, interrupts Yo Gabba Gabba, and demands treats? They are lucky I don’t trick them). It is most certainly not the decorations (Once your heart has literally stopped beating one time, motion detector plastic witches tend not to do much for you).

No, what does it for me are the costumes, or, more specifically, my costumes. BECAUSE THEY ARE AWESOME.

Now, there are rules to how my costumes must work. Below I will outline the rules I have developed in my four Halloweens. And, frankly, I think that all the parents out there might want to take notes on what makes for an awesome Halloween costume, because I’ve seen what some of you are up to and, really, you need to up your game.

1) Faces are faces
Just stop it with the masks and face paint already! In a good Halloween costume there should no attempt to hide anybody’s face…because then how does anybody know who anybody else is? And if I don’t know who anybody else is, then how can I demand things of them? Also, for those of us who enjoy rubbing our hands across our face, sticking our fingers in our mouths, and generally having a wet mouth and chin area, face paint is a real no-no.

For example, here I am on Halloween 2012 dressed as Rosie the Riveter. I’m dressed as someone else. But I am still clearly me. Do you see? That is me, Esmé. No one painted my face or put anything over my face. Acceptable. (The thing on my head was questionable, but I let it slide because my arms weren’t strong enough to pull it off of my head).

2) People are people
For my first Halloween, also known as the Great Halloween Debacle of 2011, Maman made a huge strategic error and dressed me as a non-human. Honestly the whole thing was rather confusing considering it happened at such a formative point in my life (10 months is a really important time in an infants development of self, Ma!) Now, it wasn’t easy, but I have since forgiven her. She was, after all, new to this mothering thing and she mentioned that someone was keeping her up a lot (I’m not sure who that was…).

Anyway. You can see how excited I was about that costume. [slow blink] The fact that we won first prize for our family costume (little bee, bee hive, and bee keeper) was no consolation.

4. Wheels, people need wheels
This brings me to the final rule: Costumes need wheels. Because, of course. Now,  I know that not every kids is as lucky as I am to have a super awesome red wheelchair to incorporate into their Halloween costume, but, for Halloween every kid needs a good pair of wheels to turn into…a plane, or a support for their “We can do it!” sign. Or…like last year…

For when they dress like Dr. Dian Fossey. Would you really deny your children that?

So, I hope my primer on how to make Halloween awesome was helpful. I figure that even if I can get my mother in line to do something cool for Halloween, my advice might not be all that bad (I mean, this was the woman who dressed as a fairy every year from age 2-20, please…). I’ll let you know how 2015 goes as soon as I can get Maman working on the next costume…

Best of luck,
Esmé