what a croc!

Over a month ago Luca got really into crocodiles. I had got a DVD from the library entitled The Dragon Chronicles, a PBS documentary about reptiles with the grand finale being the Komodo Dragon, of course. He was diggin' the Komodo dragons, but there was a bonus feature about Giant Crocodiles that was surprisingly intriguing. After watching the DVD, crocodiles were slyly swimming around in his thoughts. He wanted to make a tail out of a blanket and attach it with a belt, like this:

ta da! What a vicious crocodile, right? Well, it got me thinking, "Oh, we should look up crocodile costumes and see if we can make it for Halloween." (Remind me never to do this again!) So, google... tappity tap... crocodile costumes, enter. Voila! It appears another mom has attempted this for her (much older) son and came up with something fairly decent. She had a long narrow box though, which I learned was key.

Here's my attempt with a diaper box. This wasn't supposed to be the actual costume, I literally cut this right after looking at the picture on the site I saw.

I had to make one for Tizzy too. He got the mega-box-o-wipes box. He wore it for about 3 seconds.

Luca, however, wore it for a while. Even for "outside time". (You can tell from the sunshine this was quite a while ago.)

That little duct tape strap is supposed to help keep it from toppling over. The belt, obviously, is to hold his tail on.

I bet you never saw a crocodile ride a tricycle before!

And, now we know how long this croc-box-head lasts.

So, my plan was to hunt for a long narrow box (with all my spare time) and figure out some kind of green pants/suit and tail thing. (As you can see, I worked-out all the details.) It so happens, that my brother was at a thrift store and found a crocodile body section of a costume that would fit Luca. Okay, cool, now I just have to figure out the head.

Then, about a week ago, after all the crocodile costume talk, Luca says, "Mom, I don't want to be a crocodile. Maybe later."

Me: You're going to be a crocodile. (Though I was thinking, maybe it would be best if I could convince him to be something else since I don't know how I'm going to come up with a crocodile head. Hmmmm?)

Fast forward to Saturday night, we get together with family for dinner and my brother doesn't bring the body half, but it's not like that really matters because I still have not found an appropriate box and turned it into a crocodile head. Before going to bed, Joe and I decide we'll use the fireman jacket and hat that Grandma gave us, with a hose, his red boots and, of course, an eyeliner mustache. What fireman wouldn't have a thick mustache?

We get home from church, eat lunch, try to get Tiz to nap and get some rest in before we hit the boulevard. When talk of trick-o-treating comes up, Luca says, "I don't want to do trick or treating." What?! It's candy kid! So, we (Joe, Luca and I) talk and Joe and Idecide we are not about to force our kid into a costume to get candy since we really don't care that much anywho. Tizzy doesn't know what's going, nor does Leo, so that's it, we're staying home. Luca says, "No, I do want to go trick or treating." Okay, he just realized what he was going to miss out on. Let's do this. We, get our game face on and start getting everything together. By the time he flip-flopped again, Joe cut him off. The end result being that this year, we did not go trick or treating but stayed home and ate the rest of the Halloween cookies we made. It is a hard lesson Luca learned, but we don't do that changing-the-mind game in this family.

The end.