The Halloween Costume That The Boy Chose Himself

He loves to dress up. With the exception of Woody, Micah's favorite toy is the dress-up trunk. He has several pirate outfits, an entire Buzz Lightyear getup, cowboy gear, hats of all shapes and colors, sports gear, skirts, a Hawaiian shirt, and his trusty man-bag. There's more, but those are the ones that get used regularly. Micah loves to dress up.

Any time the kids have a dress-up night at church, he declares it a free-for-all and dresses up, too, even if his class isn't in on the dressing up.  Micah dresses up to play a certain character that he's watching on TV, and dresses up to jump on the trampoline. He never needs a reason to dress up, either. He'll just dress up for the sheer love of dressing up.

This Halloween, we figured Micah would have a blast choosing his outfit. I even got him a new pirate costume so that he'd have something original to wear if he wanted. And he did, for the Halloween parade and trunk-or-treat in town. He wore his new pirate costume with his striped pajamas underneath to help ward off the cold. I sent the pirate costume to school the next day for the Halloween party since it was obviously approved by the boy.

So the night that we went trick-or-treating came around, and the kids were dressing up again. Becky and Josh, the nephew and Luke - all were in costume. But Micah was focused on going to grandma's house. His bags were packed, and he asked on his Voice every 5 minutes if we were going yet. Trick-or-treating is fun, but he was going to grandma's. Don't bother him with a costume, please.

But we were going trick-or-treating, and he needed to put clothing on because while we're all sorts of loose in our dress codes here, we do insist on more than boxer shorts when it's snowing. I figured that since he was not all that into the costume thing, I wouldn't give him a choice but would just get the same old pirate that he wore earlier in the week. I layered his pajamas on, and he asked if we were going to grandma's. Yes, Micah, we're going to grandma's after we go trick-or-treating. He was happy, but he was done getting dressed. There was no getting clothing on over those pajamas. I did what I could in the 2.5 minutes we had before running out the door and made him an impromptu stocking cap to go with it.

This year, Micah went trick-or-treating as The Boy Who Wore His Pajamas. You know, he went as himself.

*Yes, I know I said it was snowing. And I know there is no snow in this photo. This was the first stop of the night. By the last stop, we had a very good dusting of snow collecting on everything that should have been covered in Halloween instead.