The Pink Astronaut

The problem with Halloween and young children and being very social people is that there are multiple occasions on which to wear costumes leading up to Halloween night itself. When a young child wears a costume at a party that has chocolate, or paints, or dirt in the backyard, that costume will without variation become so dirty that before it can be worn again it must be washed.

Furthermore, the problem with the costumes MY children wear is that they are of the cheap, Target-bought variety, made of polyester, certainly flammable, and subject to easy ruin.

In addition, I am not the world’s most crafty or domestically inclined mother.

Given the above conditions, it is not a great surprise that I turned Kyle’s astronaut costume pink, entirely by accident but not in a way that could not have been avoided with a tiny bit of forethought.

Our Halloween festivities began the first weekend of October with a playdate at my friend Claudia’s house. It really was a full Halloween party, complete with Jello molded hearts and brains and eyeballs. The children decorated buckets and then used those to trick or treat around the house. They cavorted and snacked and got dirty and all was well.

And then we had another party to go to, so I washed the costumes. I washed them on “delicate” in cold water and then hung them to dry. Still, a hole opened in Brady’s Spiderman costume, one that could not be ignored.

A word about Spiderman. Kyle is 4 and a half years old, which means he has had four Halloweens previous to this year, two of which he has been Spiderman, which means we have two Spiderman costumes. This year, he declared early on that he wanted to be an astronaut (naturally) and I found a relatively inexpensive astronaut getup on the internet. I smugly put it up in the closet in early September, prepared.

Once we got to the Halloween parties, however, Kyle changed his mind and wanted to be Spiderman again. So I dressed him in the old costume from last year and ignored the too-short sleeves and too-short pant legs that he didn’t notice anyway. He still looked adorable. For that first party, Brady was dressed in the 2-year-old Spiderman outfit, which is of course too small for him because he is an enormous 2-year-old.

So now we have two Spidermen cavorting around town. Adorable.

At the first Halloween party. Yes, Brady’s is on backwards, because by the time I realized I had put it on backwards Brady was off and running, and I didn’t feel like fighting with him.

Kyle debuted the astronaut costume last weekend at our friends’ awesome “Nightmare Before Christmas” Halloween party. He was the cutest little space ranger there, and he had so much fun that day that he fell asleep on the couch in the middle of the very crowded and loud party.

Brady was frat boy Spiderman, wearing the larger costume so I had to keep rolling up the sleeves and pant legs all night long, and partying until we dragged him out of there. He ran back and forth through the house with the bigger kids, shouting in delight at the “scary” displays and trying to blow out all the candles.

I dressed up too, resurrecting my Beer Wench costume from last year, which I amended to be named Medieval Peasant when describing it to the children.

The sweaty astronaut and the chocolatey Spiderman had to be washed again, and since my costume had been well worn, too, I threw them all in the same delicate polyester soup together.

Note the color of my skirt.

I thought I had washed it last year, but perhaps I hadn’t. After all, once Halloween is done I just shove everything into the storage box and stick it up in the garage for next year.

The night before Kyle’s school parade, I took the wash out of the machine and noticed that the white astronaut costume had a pinkish hue, and I realized with dread that the color of my skirt had run. “He’ll never notice,” I thought. Then I pulled the vest out, and that was even pinker. I showed Stewart, who laughed and shook his head and said “That’s definitely pink.” We decided that I would throw it back in the wash with a white load and some bleach. What could happen?

Well, it’s less pink now but the graphics on the vest look like someone has chewed them. Luckily, Kyle decided he wanted to be Spiderman again for the school parade. Unfortunately, as soon as Brady saw him in the outfit he said “Where’s MY Fiderman?”

Well, his Spiderman costume had this enormous hole in the seam right in the chest area of the jumpsuit. I am no seamstress, opting to bunch buttonless shirts into the corner of a closet and eventually get my mother to fix them when she visits rather than fix that button myself. So I did what any quick-thinking white trash mom would do: I grabbed a stapler, turned that puppy inside out, and presto-change-o, we had a nicely closed hole. No one would be the wiser.

Two Spidermen, off to to their school and daycare to show off their identical and mostly intact costumes. And they lived happily ever after.

Except that today is Halloween and I have a chewed-looking, slightly pink astronaut costume and two dirty Spiderman costumes. I am going to take advantage, once again, of the ignorance of young children and hope I can get away with it one more time. Kids, if you’re reading this later in life, forgive me. You had a great time and never knew how I jerry-rigged your stuff. Love, Mom.