Baby Charlie, the flying monkey

I promise not to flood the blog with baby posts; I'll only do it insofar as it relates to the central topics of the blog.

A few months ago, my wife and I had our first child, Charlotte. A lot of my desire to make Halloween cool again is being done for her. Of course, she may grow up and think it's lame, but I'd like her to have a lot of fun, healthy experiences with the holiday and then let her make up her own mind.

One of my favorite experiences with Halloween involved making my own costumes, which I typically did every year. They were often very absurd and imaginative (like three headed skeletons), and I won quite a few awards at Halloween parades. I might never have done this if not for my mom making me some fantastic Halloween costumes when I was little. One year (2 years old, I think), I was a black widow spider. The cool part of the costume was a silver web which splayed out behind me.

So I've been putting a lot of thought into Baby Charlie's costume for this year and I'm thinking . . . flying monkey! I sort of want to start now, but she grows so freakishly fast (nearly 16 lbs. at 4 months - GAH!!!), it's impossible to tell how big she'll be in October. I'll include pics as the costume progresses.

I'm also wondering what etiquette is for trick-or-treating with very young children. She obviously won't be eating any candy at her age. In part, I want to show her (and my workmanship) off, although I don't really know the neighbors, so I guess I have no one to brag to. I may decide to go with some of the schenanegans of my youth and claim it's for a demanding older brother who's trying to maximize his candy haul. This lie was hardly ever believed when I was a kid, but pretty much always resulted in extra candy, anyway (usually with a knowing wink). As an adult, the scam is perfect - who's actually going to think I'm lying to them for a snack-sized Snickers?

Trick or treat!