How I Almost Saved Halloween

Halloween is my favorite holiday. Seriously. Last year, for the boys’ first Halloween, I left a horror convention in Vegas early to be able to share the day with them. Did you catch that? I ducked out of a horror convention. In Vegas.

But I’m working full time again, plus we just moved, plus the boys start preschool today and an endless list of other things… the boys’ Halloween costumes for this year just kept getting pushed back on the priority list. They got pushed back until Saturday. So, I simply resigned myself to the fact that they would miss this Halloween and that I’m the shittiest parent who ever lived for not getting my act together enough for my boys dress up and get free candy.

Then, late Saturday night, I had an epiphany: zombies. Zombie costumes are easy. Some rotting makeup, rip some old clothes and you’ve got yourself a brain-eating denizen of the undead. Or in my case, two denizens.

We spent the day running last-minute errands to get the guys ready for preschool and I managed to squeeze in a stop at the drugstore to get some Halloween makeup. Operation Undead Toddlers seemed a go.

Once all our errands were completed, we rushed home, fed them dinner, then set about making them up as zombies which is when Operation Undead Toddlers hit its first and final snag. Have you ever tried to put makeup on a toddler? It’s like trying to tattoo an epileptic. They wouldn’t sit still even for a second. In the end, they looked like mimes that had applied their makeup after a tequila bender.

With great shame, I declared Operation Undead Toddlers a failure. We gave them a bath and watched It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown instead. On a side note, all day the boys wore their superhero shirts. While at the drug store, they also picked out Halloween tote things — the modern version of the plastic jack-o-lantern for collecting candy. As we went from errand to errand, everyone thought they were already dressed and gave them treats. So, they did experience it a bit. Still, after the boys went down, I raided the bowl of candy for trick-or-treaters to eat my pain away.