Let’s all just agree that Pintrest ruins lives, that said, I think I figured out how it started. I’ve never understood the attraction of looking at all the projects that take hours upon hours of time only to look nothing like the photo.

Start smiling Amanda! The baby on Pintrest LOVED sitting naked in a cold, wet gourd. Image courtesy of Pinterestfail.com

I swore that I would never be that mom who stays up until 2 am, piping icing names onto cupcakes and losing it over misspelling Adelaide because why in the world would someone use five As and a Y in that name?

And I was doing pretty well on that front, until this morning when I found myself running around looking for blue sparkly pants and yellow socks. Because it’s Mini-Tex’s first Halloween. An event I didn’t take too seriously until I showed up a the third Mom and Baby class having forgotten that it was costume day. Ok the last class wasn’t so bad, I actually remembered – Mini Tex was supposed to be a cowboy however in my haste to get out the door I forgot his hat, so he ended up just being a boy again.

After seeing all the babies dressed up as adorable apples, cute chickens and lovable unicorns, I got jealous and decided to buy Mini-Tex an actual costume rather than just throwing riding headwear on him. However it was October 28th and so the shelves were bare. Hence why my son is going as a fish/bird/dinosaur. That’s what moms who wait until the last minute get- an unidentifiable mix of the animal kingdom. Just in case you were wondering, the costume was 90% off and there were two others left, in the event that you too wish to dress your infant as a fish/bird/dinosaur.

No problem, I assured myself, I’ll simply accesorize the heck out of it. This idea would have worked better if Tex and I lived in the big city where I purchased said costume. Instead we’re an hour and a half away and grateful that there’s a Walmart. So away I went this morning to find sparkly pants at the local Walmart.

Either all of the Moms who bought the cute costumes that have a definitive theme bought up the sparkly, blue baby pants, or Walmart doesn’t carry them. Regardless, I had to think of something else, so I decided on red pants. Mini-Tex actually already has red pants at home, but they have a penguin on the bum, and I didn’t need to add to the whole lizard/fish/bird confusion. So I bought new red pants with a plain bottom.

But Mini-Tex’s costume doesn’t have sleeves, it has these capped things that might be wings, or fins, or foreshortened arms so that babies can get a head start on feeling empathy for creatures without full length limbs. Regardless, Mini-Tex would need to wear a shirt underneath the costume and not just because there might be a foot of snow here on all Hallow’s Eve. I decided that a yellow shirt would work best. Only there were no yellow shirts in Mini-Tex’s size. There was, however, a yellow Minion themed shirt two sizes too big. My husband loves “Despicable Me” so this would work for Mini-Tex’s costume and be a beloved article of clothing after. Boom! Done.

Then I had a moment of doubt. It was in this moment when I bought a round trip ticket to the crazy train AND drank the crazy cocktail. What if the shade of yellow didn’t match the costume exactly? How would people know that Mini-Tex was a bird/dinosaur/fish? They might think he was a manatee/dog/banana. So I grabbed another shirt the reflective yellow of construction worker jackets. This is the moment where the crazy balloons were released into the sky signalling that the show had started.

Unwashed, the Unwashed who readily lets her child eat off the floor, who sits idly while another baby sucks on Mini-Tex’s pacifier and then hands it back to her son once the other baby is finished, without wiping it, was gone. Instead she had been replaced by the Mom who is painstakingly trying to insert another A into Adelaide at 2:13 AM. This meant that the costume needed socks because the cutest fish/bird/amphibeans have yellow feet. So Mini-Tex’s blue socks with the paw prints simply would not do.

The only problem was that the yellow socks had Minions on them. Neither fins, nor feet, nor claws have faces on them, so Minion socks will not work for fish/bird/dragons. So I went searching for dye because the store HAD to have white socks which could be coloured to match. Even though our town has a Walmart and we are grateful to have a Walmart, it’s not a big Walmart, meaning it doesn’t carry fabric dye. So I weighed my options; colouring the socks with markers would result in uneven shading, fabric paint would make them too stiff. I wandered up and down the aisles hoping in vain that the fabric dye had been shelved in a strange place and I spotted my savior- concentrated icing colouring! Edible dye in hand, I was off to find white socks.

There were no white socks. Obviously the organized mothers whose babies were dressed as strawberries had bought them all up. There were knee high socks eight sizes too big, but those would go all the way up Mini-Tex’s legs, obscuring the red pant legs giving him just a big red butt so that people would think he was a fish-monkey or a baboon-osaur.

As I stood there trying to figure out when I would have time to dye the socks between now and Monday afternoon, a little voice quietly asked “Are you making this too difficult?” God in heaven, I wish that voice had spoken sooner. I love that voice. It’s the voice that says, “Leave the laundry, no one cares” and “Your tub isn’t that dirty; go read a book”.

So I replaced the knee highs and returned the food colouring back where it belonged and walked out of the store. When I got home, my husband, ever the wonderful man exclaimed “Mini-Tex, look at this wonderful primary coloured outfit your Mom got you! You’ll be like a box of crayons!”

So he’ll be a fish/dinosaur/bird/writing utensil. Now everyone give me candy and tell me how adorable my baby is.

Tex decided to add a hat at the last moment. So now our son is a fish/bird/dinosaur-cowboy. Or maybe just a fish/bird-cowboy. Tha hat obscures the giant fin/plate on top of the costume so he looks less prehistoric. (Photo Credit – Yours Truly)