Pick your battles

Enzo received a copy of "How To Train Your Dragon" (the movie) for Christmas last year. He adored it. Whenever it came up as a topic of conversation or imaginary play he talked of Stoic the Vast or, as he put it "Hiccup's dad." Apparently Hiccup himself, despite being the hero of the story, wasn't "Viking like" enough to impress my Enzo.

As early as January I was planning the costume in my head. Fur cape, huge glorious yarn beard... This costume would be epic.

Eventually I broached the subject with Enz. "No," he said, "I wanna be Toofless."

Toothless? He'd barley ever mentioned that dang dragon. I dropped the subject and came back to it the next time he was in the thick of a game of "Hiccup's dad" Even then, in the heat of imaginative Vikingness, he insisted that he'd rather be the dragon.

I shared my frustration with The Mr and he suggested that he could be Stoic and Enzo could be Hiccup. I was mildly flabbergasted. I never thought I'd see the day when my husband would volunteer himself to be costumed but Enz was no more interested in this new outfit scenario.

So I was making a dang Toothless.

I've learned something over the last few years of Halloweens. As much as I love making intense costumes, they can really be a drag. If a costume is hard to wear or the least bit fragile, it will likely stop being fun.

The Elephant worked for my nephew despite it's being so unwieldy because it was his own idea and having it come to life made up for the trouble of walking in it. The following year he lent it to Zizza and that didn't go over quite so well.

Ziz felt like a real live scullery-step-child turned princess in her Cinderella Dress but I had her fully under-dressed and had to strip that gown off for every slide and bounce house we encountered. The memory of all the undressing and re-dressing is why I even bothered sewing for Moo this year when the preparation could have been as easy as showing her the frothy blue gown I have squirreled away upstairs.

If I were making a Toothless that actually looked like Toothless it would have been a major undertaking and I'm not talking about the time and brain power of making the thing, I'm talking about the strain of wearing something like that.

So I did this instead.

A mask, a tail, and a pair of wings all at home on a hoodie paired with a pair of slippery black pants declared to be "cozy enough for jammies." The whole thing took about 2 hours and he was happy as a clam.

I never did put a zipper in the hoodie, I didn't have a black separating one in my stash, he thought my suggestion of putting in the orange-ish red one was absurd and I still haven't made it to a fabric store.

Maybe If I'm lucky Duke will take an interest in Stoic and someday I'll get the pint-sized Viking Chieftain I dreamed of. He'd just have to strap off the beard for the bounce houses. I think we can handle that much fuss.