The big news of this particular Halloween is that Calvin got a great costume. For those of you who don't know, Calvin is a very non-squeaky wheel in a house full of other wheels that are rather screechy and demanding. Yay for me, but not so much for him. I find it all too easy to say to myself "Oh Calvin won't mind" and he usually doesn't. Sadly this happens throughout the year in a variety of situations. But what kind of message does that send? Some years in October when I am overwhelmed (okay, that would be most years) I don't really get around to whipping up something great for Calvin and so I end up buying him a cheap-o costume at Party City. Bless his heart, he never really seems to mind, but I do. In the non-PC words of my non-PC dad, he gets treated like a red-headed step child. So this year I committed myself to really putting Calvin first and he was going to be Patrick to Tommy's SpongeBob. He was really excited and a few weeks ago before school, I had him lie down on the wood floor and I traced him in sidewalk chalk. Only when I started cutting out the pink Patrick fleece I somehow made the costume too short and suddenly I began to suspect that Calvin wasn't going to be Patrick anymore. Being Calvin, when he came home later that afternoon he took the news pretty well and was soon just as excited to be SpongeBob. And he was an adorable SpongeBob.
What made this costume was the short shorts. When Pie saw Calvin fully dressed he looked at me and said, "Did you have to make the shorts so short?" Well, yes. Yes I did. Because the magic of this costume isn't the fact that I took 2 1/2 yards of green 1/2 craft foam and cut it and glued it and then hand stitch it through the glued foam to reinforce the seams, somehow creating a sponge shape and then covering it with fabric and used blue and red Sharpie's to color the bands on the socks and red felt to make the little tie. No. The magic came from the legs. I wish you could have seen him walking around in his costume, because the pictures just don't do it justice. It was the long skinny legs working those short shorts that got the laughs. And SpongeBob is meant to be funny. I know, I watch him every day.
3 comments:
Thomas is the same non-squeaky wheel, easy going way. It's one thing I absolutely love about him, yet hope that in the future girls won't take advantage of this sweetness.
Calvin's costume is perfect. You are a rockin' mama in the Halloween costume dept. Seriously.
nice work. calvin is getting cuter everyday (especially now that he will let me hug and kiss him again, i was sad when i came home from my mission to a welcome banner that included this sentiment from Calv: welcome home aunt Kirsten! Please don't hug or kiss or squeeze me!.
ouch. all better now though.
This was a work of art. I still don't get HOW you did it, even with your description. Calvin rocks it.
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