Under Pressure, of the Halloween Variety

Originally published on DC Metro Moms, 10/15/09:

 Playing dress-up, hanging with friends, getting free candy?  Fun, good times, and yes please!  From a young kid's perspective, what is there to stress about when it comes to Halloween?  But when you're a mom who subscribes to a myriad of parenting magazines, suddenly the pressure is on to parade the neighborhood with your child clad in a gasp-inspiring costume.  Once our second child was born, my obsessive mindset added in the matching factor.  Now our numbers are up to three kids, and I'm pretty sure the image of Halloween perfection floating around my brain is completely impossible to attain.

Perhaps the problem lies with the pile of magazines that come to grace the basket in the downstairs bathroom each month.  From the one that screams its offer of 27 new tips on feeding your baby organically in vibrant colors on the cover, to the one that parades beautiful children from a wide variety of ethnic backgrounds all decked out in $400 sweaters amongst its pages, they all share the Halloween curse-- images of the perfect costume.

Now, it's imperative to say here that if there is indeed a crafty gene, as I believe there to be, it is beyond obvious that I have a major deficiency.  The last time I laid hands on a sewing machine was when I had to create a knock-off Pound Puppy in junior high home ec class, and I have a lingering memory of my shirt sleeve becoming one with my ridiculously misshapen puppy pal.  I'm not a fan of scrapbooking, and truth be told, our third child doesn't even have a semi-completed baby book, but rather a storage box in his closet that holds sticky notes with scribbled dates and milestones, and a few cute baby outfits thrown in for good measure.  I never passed through the preschool drawing stage, but I have perfected our own family portrait ala stick figures, in a somewhat srecognizable fashion.  That's the extent of my artistic and crafty abilities- a stick figure with a goatee that surprisingly resembles my husband.

So when it comes to Halloween, I feel the pressure begin to rise just as those magazines start getting dropped into the mailbox in early September, yet I don't have the creativity or craftiness to oblige my desires to be the perfectly creative mom of the perfectly costumed children.  I've had a small taste of the good Halloween life once or twice, and I have to admit... it tasted good.  When my oldest son and I blatantly copied an idea from one of those magazines (which is what they're there for, right?), and the extent of the craftiness necessary was to cut electrical tape and double sided velcro, he won a prize in our city's Halloween parade.  I am ashamed to confess just how superior I felt, which in my 9 year career as a mom is a feeling practically unheard of.

That's what it comes down to, apparently.  Just another competition fueled by my ever-present inferior-mom complex, stoked by my addiction to parenting magazines.  Time to break the cycle.  Guess what we did on our most recent trek to Target?  Yup, we picked up a cheap-o costume for my 3 year old, mermaid-obsessed daughter, and I plan on throwing on the 1 year old's raincoat to make him a fisherman, fulfilling my ridiculous need for some sort of shared theme, but requiring little to no creativity whatsoever.  I have no idea what the 9 year old will be wearing, but really at the end of the night, no one will be remembering the costumes anyway when they're filling their mouths with Milky Ways, right?

This is an original DC Metro Moms post.

Dawn blogs nonsense about her family at my thoughts exactly, but tries to sound intelligent when she reviews books at 5 Minutes for Books.