How do you truly determine that you got the most of a child’s Halloween costume?
Let me tell you about the legendary story of the cheetah costume. A couple of years ago, my middle daughter was still deep in thinking that she was going to be a cheetah and when you compound this with the fact her favorite holiday is Halloween, hold on to your tight. We given the daunting task of finding a costume with ears, a tail and gloves while looking real. My husband and I did our research before we made our discovery. We figured it was going to be the perfect Halloween until suddenly it wasn’t.
Exactly a week before Halloween, we found ourselves in Children’s Hospital. A freak accident on a slide resulted with a high arm bone fracture and given its location, could not be casted. My daughter found herself forced to wear an immobilizer that wrapped around her arm, neck and stomach. The daily struggle of button down shirts and pajamas with a preschooler did not even touch the devastation of having to wear an immobilizer. The disappointment lead her down a path of not wanting to go trick or treat let alone wear the costume. So while little sister went trick or treat, the would have been cheetah and I watched cartoons instead.
Like many other broken bones, her arm healed and by mid December, the immobilizer was gone. The day that the immobilizer disappeared was the same exact day the costume came out of the closet. When my daughter did not have to out in public, that costume was on and that garment was a regular customer at the washing machine. However, the constant wearing was not the most strangest part of this story nor is it the most memorable. That the moment in time would be thanks in part of the preschool director.
The preschool that my daughter went to had a gingerbread house activity with parents a week before the Christmas pageant. Prior to any building of tasty structures, the director explained the children had to wear a costume of their choosing at the pageant as long as it was a person like Mary, a religious figure like an angel or an animal that may have been there at the birth of Jesus. I looked at my daughter during this speech and my daughter lit up like a Christmas tree. So after the meeting and the gingerbread house building, I asked the preschool director if my daughter could wear her cheetah costume and with her already knowing the events leading up to Halloween, she simply replied “I cannot prove that a cheetah was not there.” Just like that, there was a cheetah when Jesus was laid in a manger.
My daughter continued to wear this costume until she could not anymore which was more than a year after its initial debut. Without a doubt, we definitely got our money out of the costume!
