This is what happens when you encourage thinking outside the box.

I change my mind. I do have a favorite. And it’s Bee. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It all sounds like pretty talk when it’s all theoretical, but then you throw Halloween costumes into the mix and…well, there you go. Bee clearly loves me more and wants to keep my mind intact, so PONIES FOR BEE!

Ahem, er, so we started talking about Halloween costumes this weekend while I was dying of The Plague, Revisited. In between admonitions of “Please <cough> stop <sneeze> arguing!” and distractions of “Why don’t you <cough, wheeze> go eat some plague cake?” I thought it would be just the right time to ask my darlings if they had settled on what they wanted to be for Halloween. That’s when Bee declared she was still madly in love with fairies (and her mama) and so instantly declared, “Duh…Tinkerbell.” She has pretty much wanted to be Tinkerbell since the day after Halloween last year. Stubborn or decisive or sanity-saving – you decide.

Gracie, on the other hand. Oh, Gracie, Gracie, Gracie. She used to want to be a punk rocker. How much fun that would have been! Dazzlingly sparkly 80s clothes…funky cowgirl boots…denim short skirt and funky leggings…hair spiked, teased, and dyed different colors. I already bought AquaNet, people! It was going to be So! Much! Fun!! And then Gracie decided to play “Possessed” to her sister’s “Blessed” and told me that she wanted instead to be for Halloween a….tornado.

A…tornado?

See, this is what I get for letting her watch Stormchasers reruns with me. A tornado. Okay – how exactly am I going to do that? “Gracie, I don’t know if I could do that. Even if we dress you in grey leggings and a gray turtleneck [or t-shirt, more likely, since we live practically on top of the freakin' equator], and maybe have streamers coming off of you, I don’t know if anyone will know who you are.”

“That’s okay! We can get rocks and grass and glue it to my outfit!”

“Yeah, even if you spin up to the doorway and I occasionally throw a cow past you, I don’t know if people will know what you are.” Heh. And maybe I should play the soundtrack to Twister in the back ground. Or yell, “It’s blowin’ up!” like Reed does in Stormchasers. Or glue a Discovery Channel logo (or The Weather Channel) logo to her shin. Or, hey!, maybe I can convince Bee to be a witch and they can sing the Witch’s Theme from The Wizard of Oz when they ring the doorbell. Yeah, right, there’s no way Bee’s changing her mind.

Nope, there’s no changing Gracie’s mind either. She wants to be a tornado. I’m hoping once the stores put out the hair spray/dye, she’ll get all distracted by the shiny and change her mind. Until then, I think my weekends between now and Halloween are booked trying to figure out how the heck to my daughter into a tornado without bringing along pictures of her room to prove it.

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Tags: halloween, halloween costumes, parenting, Stormchasers, tornadoes, weather, Wizard of Oz