Halloween Hipster

by Phil

Halloween!

One of the best parts of Halloween is all of the absurd baby costumes. When babies don't have any control over their lives or haven't yet developed a fear of looking ridiculous, they offer a blank canvas of potential. It's the perfect opportunity for later, teenage embarrassment when you pull out the photos to show their friends.

Last year, when our son was only about 4 months old, we didn't do too much. We did put him in a pumpkin for a few minutes. Don't worry, the pumpkin is lined so he didn't get all goupy.

We also had a little skeleton onesie that he wore on a few occasions, including the All Souls' Processional since we were living in Tucson at the time. (Side note, try to make it to Tucson for the All Souls' Processional at least once. It's an amazing event.)

Our son rolled over for the first time on the same day as last year's procession!

So this year we wanted to put him in an actual costume. We started out with a store-bought dragon that was super cute. We were having an indoor party, though, and we were worried that the padded costume would be too warm. It would have been fine if he were older and we were going trick-or-treating outside. But indoors, it was a no-go.

Shortly before Halloween, Richmond held it's annual Folk Music festival. We went and had a great time (I'll write a post about it soon). We noticed that there was a large number of hipsters hanging around the festival, which led her to wonder aloud how hipster parents dressed their toddlers. Do they try hard (while making it look like they didn't try at all) to make their toddlers tiny hipsters? And... boom! New costume idea.

We returned the warm dragon costume and set about putting way too much thought and work into making our son the most repellent hipster we could. We succeeded in the hipster part but failed at repellent bit. He was the most adorable snob ever.

The results-

You may notice a few details about his costume. The thick-rimmed glasses, the androgyny of the purple scarf and too, too tight jeans (which are actually jeggings from the girls' department), the floppy hat and stripped socks. 

The plaid shirt clashes with the purple scarf and the lime green deep-v t-shirt (see below) in a way that says, "I don't care." The hoody is properly redundant with the floppy hat.

The right leg of his jeans is rolled up to avoid catching the chain while riding his fixie.

We worked on wearing those glasses and a hat for a week before Halloween. He looks at them as  playthings, just like everything else in the world.

Waiting for the poetry jam to start. He's got some free verse he's going to drop on the unsuspecting crowd. His sun metaphors are completely deck.

And, of course, his messenger bag has a skull on it, as do his socks. The skulls don't match, sending the message that he just can't put in the effort. 

That's a candy bracelet in his right hand there. 

As the layers get peeled off, the costume keeps going! His deep-v is also a message tee, expressing his contempt for whatever it is you like because it's clearly not obscure enough. The tee reads "That Thing You Like is Dumb" There's no punctuation. Who has time for periods?

Fingerstache! (Don't worry, it's washable marker and came off immediately.)

This one is blurry but I had to include it because the expression is classic.

And, of course, we end on the chest (temporary) tattoo that includes wings and a message.

Yeah, we tried way too hard. The hipsters would look down upon us for putting in the effort. But we had a blast. By the time he reaches his teens this costume isn't going to make any sense to him at all but we can reassure him that he was very hip and with it for awhile there.

Today he's back in regular jeans and a Superman t-shirt. The him-of-yesterday scoffs in the general direction of the him-of-today.