So, I decided at the last minute on the kids' costumes. The boy was dead set on wearing the bunny suit his Auntie Xan got for him last Christmas, and who am I to argue? But I couldn't leave it at that, so I decided that he could be the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland, and the girl would of course be Alice. I decided this, oh, five days before Halloween. For his costume I just added a little coat I found at the thrift store for 1.50, and then magicked a pocket watch in about five minutes out of a Nutella lid, aluminum foil, and electrical tape. For her costume, however, I sewed a little blue dress out of an old sheet, and a pinafore-type apron out of some leftover white fabric, and then went wacky and decided to knit her some hair (from the Hallowig pattern on Knitty) on October 30th. I raced to the finish with all of it, finishing the hair at 5:42 on October 31. Almost as soon as I finished, I heard some crying from the backyard, but knew the kids were with their papa, so no worries. Cue ominous music. Henning came in with the girl, who was still sniffling, as I was hurriedly putting the finishing touches on our front porch decor. Just as I was finished, and starting to costume the kids, Vala fell face down on the sofa and immediately began screaming. After falling onto A SOFA CUSHION. Cue triple chord signal of tension. She continued to cry, clutching her arm, and I thought it looked kind of...pink, and swollen. I tried to move her thumb. She screamed. I screamed, at my husband, and said something really helpful like "What the hell happened in the backyard??!?!" He told me she fell off the swing to the ground, a distance of maybe two feet. Nothing serious could have happened, right? I messed around with her wrist. She screamed again. I gently moved her fingers. Scream.
I suddenly realized I had a homemade Alice in Wonderland costume that was going to wind up laying in a box until maybe next year, when she will probably decide she wants to be a bear or a race car driver or a Pussycat doll. Or, let's be honest, Alice, at which point the costume will be ridiculously too small.
And so, Vala spent Halloween in the Emergency Room with her Papa, getting a wee little cast on her wee little broken arm, while I took my, now context-less, White Rabbit-garbed son trick-or-treating. See?
Gavin with his Gramma, just before the big event.
Gotta love those ears.
But all was not lost. I just tossed the costumes on the kids the next day, and ran 'em around the park, all to create the following photo essay, entitled "Alice and her broken arm give the Rabbit a hard time."
Alice, complete with cast, races into the park to look for trouble.
"Is that a Rabbit carrying a pocketwatch?"
Following....
...the White...
...Rabbit.
"You wanna go down there?"
"Here you go, Alice."
"I'm supposed to eat this?"
"No way."
"Alice?"
Thank you, thank you. And now for the curtain call. As the White Rabbit, please welcome Gavin!
And introducing, in the roll of Alice with the broken arm, Vala!
Give em a hand, folks! And thank you for coming. Don't forget to tip your waiter!
(p.s. if you are saying to yourself, "hey, i thought she said she knitted some hair! where's the hair?" i have to tell you that, unfortunately, at completion, I had made it too short, and it looked, in the words of Gramma, "a little more monty python than alice in wonderland." ah well.)
