Help! My Daughter Wants To Spend All Of October In Her Halloween Costume

girl halloweenAt the end of August, I did my annual back-to-school shopping. At the beginning of every season, I make one huge shopping trip to outfit my daughter for the next few months. I spend a couple hundred dollars and then I don’t have worry about clothes for the rest of the season. As a woman who isn’t huge on shopping (blasphemous, I know), it’s a pretty good set-up. One aspect of shopping for the months ahead, I buy for upcoming holidays way ahead of time. So in August, I bought Halloween pajamas and shirts for Brenna.

One such pair of pajamas was purple with glow-in-the-dark skeleton bones on it. My little girl was instantly in love. The day I brought them home, she informed me that she would wear them every day until Halloween. Well my friends, it’s been a month, and we’ve had very few evenings where she hasn’t gotten her way. I let her wear them two nights in a row and then I throw them in the laundry. Hopefully they get done that day. On the few times that they haven’t been clean, she’s had to make do with other Halloween-themed pj’s. And she’s never been particularly thrilled about it. One night, she just slept in her underwear in protest.

Turns out, the skeleton pajamas were just the tip of the Halloween iceberg this year. Brenna has been wishing for October since the minute I told her what month would bring the trick-or-treating. She’s been dreaming up elaborate costumes, drawing out game plans, and categorizing her favorite candy for weeks now. She’s helped me decorate the house in pumpkins, black cats and ghosts. I honestly don’t know how she’s going to wait another 30+ days.

Before this year, my daughter never really cared about Halloween. Sure, you got to dress up. The candy is always cool. But it was really just another day. We’ve always had a dress-up trunk with lots of costumes, but it never got a whole lot of attention. More than anything, my daughter was angry that people in bloody costumes would purposely jump out and try to terrify her.

Now, the tides have turned. We are in complete Halloween mode. We’ve watched The Nightmare Before Christmas incessantly. I’m pretty sure that my daughter is planning on wearing a costume for at least the next month.

So far, her costume ideas include being a mermaid. Except she doesn’t want to be a normal mermaid with a pretend fin that is actually open at the bottom. She wants the full thing, and she wants her dad to pull her around in a wagon filled with water. She’s considered being a Power Ranger, but only if we organize enough people to be the other Rangers. There can’t just be one. She wants to hire people to walk around as her back-up. She consented to being Rapunzel, but only if I can somehow give her magic hair that’s 20 feet long.

Brenna wants to spend all of October in costume, but only if the costumes are impressive and ornate. Apparently my pre-schooler subscribes to the Heidi Klum school of Halloween preparation.

If you see a little girl walking around as a mummy in the grocery store or a superhero at the park, just smile and wave at us. She just wants a dress rehearsal for the big night. She wants to make sure that she has the most eye-catching and perfect costume on the block. Then she wants to go home and wear her skeleton pajamas. And if we’re this excited about Halloween, Heaven help me when she starts to see all the Christmas decorations hit the streets. At this rate, we’ll start wearing jingle bells on November 2nd.

(Photo: toriru/Shutterstock)

Similar Posts