A Baby Detective, Of Course

Halloween has come and gone!  Even though I wasn't very decorated this year, even though Thumper is just a baby and won't remember any of it, it was still the most festive I've probably felt in years.  

A few months ago I decided to pick up a Halloween book to read to Thumper.  We were in a major hurry and it wasn't the most thought-out decision.  I literally snatched up the first one I saw, which was "A Halloween Scare in (Our Home State)!"  That's nice, I thought.  Local.  Oh, was a rube I was.  

It's literally a fill-in-the-blank book.  Like, you can actually tell, in the illustrations, where the name of the state was inserted.  Random names of towns are completely out of place in a generic poem.  I was so dumb.  I read it a few times anyway, to have something spooky and really out of sheer stubbornness, but next year I will actually, you know, flip through a book before purchasing.  Or just read reviews on Amazon. 

The costumes were considerably more successful.  We started out by looking at a Halloween costume store online, just to see what was out there.  We were just looking for something in which we thought Thumper would look cute.  We landed on a "Business baby" costume.  Later, we realized we might've been subconsciously inspired by a book we read called The Boss Baby.  I figured we'll have at least ten years of superheroes, animals or whatever else Thumper is into; might as well go outside the box a little this first year.  

When the costume arrived it fit perfectly, and the little felt hat was adorable.  The Yeti pointed out that he looked kind of like Nick Charles from the movie The Thin Man - and an idea was born.  Thumper's costume remained the same, but the new plan was for the Yeti and I to dress similarly old-timey and be generic detectives of that era. Actually, since the Yeti typically refuses to dress in costume at all, my first idea was to have him hold a sign that said "DUNIT."  You know, like the answer to "whodunit"?  Annnnd I'll see myself out.  

Going for the actual Thin Man era is a bit tricky (Nick and Nora are rich in the mid 1930s, when, you know, everyone was Not Rich - I'd recognize architecture from that era more easily than fancy clothing) so I figured 1920s was close enough.  I got the most demure flapper dress costume I could find - something a little more Downton Abbey and less night-at-Tina-Turner's-speakeasy - and did my best to make my pixie haircut approximate finger waves.  The Yeti wore a suit jacket and tie and a monocle, which made him look sufficiently deranged.  

For Thumper, we drew on a tiny mustache and got him a large, lightweight, plastic magnifying glass.  He was really what pulled it all together; separately we looked vaguely old-timey but together, it was obvious that he, at least, was a detective (I was intending to be a detective too, but once dressed I looked more villainous).  

Alas, though he looked adorable, Thumper was not in the best of moods.  We think he's teething yet again (6 teeth so far and counting) and though he had no problems with his costume when I first tried it on, he was not pleased with it Halloween night.  We basically wore our costumes to go out, run a short errand and pick up dinner, snap a few photos, and then took them off.  The whole thing was probably less than an hour.  

The felt hat has been played with since the costume arrived, and some of my favorite pictures are where he's wearing it, but I hadn't been able to post them since I wanted the costume to be a surprise.  Thus, I'm including some of those, since he's more happy and the lighting's better.  

Most of the Halloween photos were taken on the Yeti's phone and I didn't think to snare them, but I've got one pre-mustache, and one post-.  

So, without further ado: 

And the finished look - 

We got a murder to solve here, see

Happy Halloween!