Halloween use to be a time that my little boy enjoyed quite a bit. His first year he was only five months old so granted he probably didn't really care as long as he was being cuddled and fed periodically. But he sure looked cute in his little angel costume.
It actually wasn't until his third Halloween when he was two and a half (and shocking the same year he slowly spiraled away from me) that I started to realize that Brian would never put Halloween as one of his favorite holidays. He hated his spider costume and hated the uncertainty of knocking on doors and then walking away- he really, really wanted to go into the houses if we were knocking on the doors!
The following Halloween he dressed as a dragon and Corbin was a knight. I'm sure they were incredibly cute together trick-or-treating, but I wouldn't know as I was my sister's labor coach as she gave birth to my beautiful niece, Layla, on Halloween night.
The next year Corbin wanted us to all do a super hero theme. I was Wonder Woman, Josh was Superman, Corbin was Iron Man, and Brian was Captain America. It was a pretty good year as I realized a trick to getting Brian to like a costume was to have it as much like regular clothes as possible- no hats, masks, capes, etc. We did a short trick-or-treating route and he really did okay, with only a few tantrums about not going into all the houses.
So his sixth Halloween I decided I'd let him pick his costume. Up to that point I had always picked them out. He chose a Wall-E costume and I figured since he chose it he would wear it. Well I had forgotten everything I realized the year before. He hated the costume- it had goggles, gloves and the costume itself was like a sandwich board. It wasn't happening. He screamed and cried and I ended up just outfitting him in Corbin's knight costume from the year before. And he was happy, he even kept on the hood for a little while!
Trick-or-treating time is around the corner again. Corbin has been discussing it for a while and has settled on being Albus Dumbledore. I'll be constructing a magical robe for him to wear. For Brian, well I'm still clueless. We'll think of something. And if that fails, well, we still have the knight costume.
