Best Halloween Costumes Ever

Halloween was last week, but the kids have known what they were going to be for months now. During Gabe's Star Wars kick, he decided (with gentle coaxing by me) to be Luke Skywalker. So, also with gentle coaxing by me, Norah obviously decided to be Princess Leia. I mean, how perfect could it be? Blond haired, blue eyed boy with a natural tendency towards feathered hair and a brown eyed brunette who spends 90% of every day referring to herself as a princess! It's like Lucas wrote those parts with my kids in mind.

The pulling off of the costumes is 100% not of my doing, though. Over the past few months, Libby has been thrift store shopping for pieces, and then she spent several hours sewing and putting them together. She is an honest to god trooper about these things and deserves all the credit for how awesome they turned out.

Well, except for the combing of Gabe's hair. I did that. And I don't think I did a terribly great job of it. His hair just wouldn't part/feather the way I wanted it to and I'll be damned if I could remember how I created my glorious feathers in the 80s. I managed to get a GREAT flip on the sides, but his hair just wouldn't stay parted no matter what I did. Little disappointing, but now I guess he looks like Luke after he took off a stocking cap and then stood in a wind tunnel, which isn't a set of circumstances he was LIKELY to do, but anything is possible with Lucas at the reigns.

Speaking of hair, Gabe was a trooper on that end, too. To perfect the costume, Gabe allowed us to grow his hair out pretty much since the beginning of the year. It was long, shaggy, and miserably hot for him all through the summer when, after even a little bit of running around, his head was a matted, smoldering wad of misery.

Man he can be cheeky sometimes.

This one . . . I dunno. Lots of attitude going on here. High school could be interesting.

I know it's not really canon for Leia to be wielding a lightsaber while wearing this outfit--and I honestly have no idea what color her lightsaber was supposed to be when she did eventually get one--but lightsabers make GREAT light sources for kids walking dark streets! They are like glowsticks, but not sucky!

Was all the suffering and trouble worth it? As I didn't have to go through any of it, I give a resounding YES! The costumes were adorably awesome and the kids had a great time with them.

And speaking of Lucas at the reigns (which I was, you know, awhile back). Norah was SUPER excited that she was, technically, a Disney Princess for Halloween as well as being Princess Leia. A twofer! She's still a little fuzzy on her grasp of the twofer, but someday she'll truly appreciate it. Probably after she starts listening to classic rock stations on Tuesdays.

If only I'd thought to get out that grappling hook I made in high school! I could have let him try to reenact the swinging-over-the-big-chasm-thingy scene from Star Wars! Such a missed opportunity. 

A pretty hilarious video of Gabe trying to catch a doughnut without touching it. Not really Halloweeny, but he's wearing his costume, so that counts, right?

Norah's New Thinking Noise

A couple weeks back, we were driving somewhere or other and I looked over my shoulder and saw Norah sitting in her car seat, and I was struck with a memory. Of her strapped into her conversion seat, looking out the window or whatever, and going "Nnnggguuuuuuuhhhhh, nnnggguuuuuuuuhhh," over and over again. Or sitting on the floor in the living room with a washable marker, drawing an infinite number of little circles that really looked more like Jesus fishes, going "Nnnggguuuuuuuuuuuhhh, nnnggguuuuuuuuuuhhh" over and over. Her thinking noise. Here's a video in case you've forgotten what it sounded like:

She just sort of stopped doing that noise somewhere along the way, and we didn't really notice its absence. Which is odd, considering it was the background noise of my life for so many months. But there you have it.

But recently she's been doing something a little different. While she's working on things, she will talk and sing constantly, seemingly without breathing. I'm guessing this is a girl thing. I've gotten pretty good at selectively blocking most of it out, which irritates her when, in the middle of an hour long monologue, she asks me a question and I somehow miss it. Gabe hasn't quite gotten used to blocking it out, yet, as you'll see in the video.

Goddamn blogger.com. It doesn't like the video. It also doesn't like the other one of Norah looking at a toy catalog that is pretty funny (family probably already saw both of these anyway, I think Libby emailed them out). But here's the youtube links, just in case:

Thinking Noise
Spiderman!