10 Ways Halloween Is Better With a Baby
Sure, they’re cute and cuddly and will definitely take care of us in our old age, but let’s face it, there’s really one reason and one reason alone we decide to have children: Halloween. Think that kids are going to cramp your Halloween style? Au contraire, brah. When it comes time to trade in the boos and boobs for booboos and … well, if you’re nursing, boobs, you’re in for the greatest Halloweens of your life. Here’s why.
1. The baby doesn’t even need to be born to up your Halloween game. The magic that is Halloween with a baby begins long before you can do the whole adorable lobster-in-a-pot thing. While that baby’s still cooking in your pot (sorry), the world can be your Halloween oyster (perhaps the only oyster you’re able to stomach at that point). I unfortunately just missed the window of a Halloween pregnancy, as my kid was conceived on Nov. 8. (TMI?) I instead spent that last childless one dressed in an incredible Wayne’s World couple’s costume at a party full of keg-standing Pokémon who looked at us with approving, “Rock stars! On fleek!” I think we decided then and there we were pretty much already parents.
I’d very soon learn, however, that pregnancy can be rough. By the time you’ve popped enough to dress that thang up, you’ve hopefully been through the worst of it - the morning sickness, the fragile first trimester, the going through all of that and hiding it behind a clenched smile. Even if you’re still feeling like crap, pregnant Halloween gives you the chance to embrace that gorgeous bump that’s been weighing you down and let it lift you up - to literally adorn it and celebrate it and laugh. In a perfect world, we’d be able to do that on the daily. Seize that magic - even if, like Cinderalla’s pumpkin, it only lasts that one night, you’d be surprised how much it can rub off. (Cinderella’s pumpkin is a great pregnant costume BTW - put that ahead of Juno and behind Miley’s wrecking ball.)
2. Baby costumes. Nuff said. As I previously mentioned, 90 percent of people who decide to become parents base that decision on Halloween and, more specifically, baby costumes. (Don’t fact check-me on that one.) Let’s face it, a baby dressed up as anything - a chicken - stop - A LAMB - NO - A TINY LITTLE MONKEY. OK, I’m done. As soon as I add: A PUPPY!!!!! Got twins?! Peas in a pod? THING ONE AND THING TWO? UPS GUY AND A BOX (your least favorite one can be the box. I kid, I kid)? Babies also come with props that allow you to take your Halloween game to an entirely new level. Baby Amelia Earhart in her Uppababy plane?! BABY COSTUMES!
3. The family that Halloweens together is the best, you guys. Remember when you wanted to dress up like Keenan and Kel, and your best friend was like, “Do I know you?” Or when you wanted to dress up as Christiane Amanpour and Candy Crowley and your boyfriend was all, “We need to talk.” Well, now you don’t need to talk! In fact, with a baby, one person in the group can’t even (talk, that is). Though you’re certainly a unit on any other day, there’s such a playful and powerful camaraderie when you take to the Halloween streets as a ridiculously dressed team. There’s a romance to seeing your man dressed as that old dude from Up, pushing your chubby Boy Scout baby in a stroller full of balloons. Before baby, my husband always fought me on a Golden Girls costume. Add a toddling Sophia on a walker (props, props!) and he’s off making his list of St. Olaf jokes. More traditional? Wizard of Oz as a family always kills - you can even get your dog involved.
4. Halloween with baby isn’t scary! JUST SCARY ADORABLE, AMIRITE? To be honest, Halloweening as an adult always freaked me out just a bit. Adults in masks are terrifying to everyone, right?? (And no, I was not the girl who made my mom pick me up from Scream before Sidney’s popcorn popped.) I think Sexy Pizza Rat scares me even more. And haunted houses? Are you nuts? Being afraid of people touching me is, like, my resting face. But people being paid seasonally to jump out and grab me COVERED IN WIGS AND SPIRIT GUM? Pass. When you have a baby, it’s entirely inappropriate for that baby to go anywhere near a haunted house.
5. Bring on the festivities! Speaking of keeping things light, Halloween with a baby opens up a whole world of festivities, fanfare, and front door decor that apparently make people uneasy when coming from someone who doesn’t have a baby (HEARD YA LOUD AND CLEAR, CO-OP BOARD). Never more will I carve my own adult name into my own adult jack-o-lantern. Never again will I be ushered to the back of the kiddie/dog costume contest because I don’t have a kid or a dog or a costume. Your baby is your ticket into a world of Halloween joy. As the saying goes, “Carve a pumpkin, paint its face, Halloween’s a happy place.” (Also when you have a baby, you can make up shit like that.)
6. That thing where babies let you dress them up as anything. There’s no greater festivity than having a new baby. But that shit is hard. As much as you want to explode with inconceivable amounts of love for this little person who constantly explodes with inconceivable amounts of … things you can’t even conceive, sometimes you look at that little love and would just rather see Beyoncé. Or Frida Kahlo. Or ketchup. Or PUPPIES! Good news is, Halloween with a baby allows you exactly that. There’s a very sweet spot with a very little baby where you can throw any wig or moustache on the kid, and he or she has no choice but to go with it.
7. That thing when they suddenly want to pick their own costumes. And then comes that dreaded Halloween when your baby first learns “no” and maybe doesn’t want to dress up as Ruth Bader Ginsburg again this year. The bad news is that your kid’s an asshole, but the great news is that she’s her own asshole. While it may break your heart that your darling little princess would rather be Cobra Kai Johnny than, well, a darling little princess, take solace in remembering that Halloween is such an exciting early opportunity to let your kids’ imaginations take the lead and catch a glimmer of what interesting, weird little people they really are. Sure, it may be more of a headache for you to figure out how to dress your kid up as a floor lamp rather than flower, but when you walk behind that confident, trick-or-treating little lamp, know she’s living her deepest, wildest dreams, and you helped make it happen. And then eat her candy.
8. YOU GET TO EAT THEIR CANDY. Remember that year when you were finally old enough to go trick-or-treating by yourself, and you created an incredible costume and rang that first doorbell only for your neighbor to be like, “Aly … you’re 25. And a floor lamp … again?” So what?! When you finally reach the age when your parents aren’t overseeing your candy intake, you have to stop collecting your candy? This is America. And I’m convinced Whatchamacallits only exist on Halloween. And thus, Halloween as a parent is simply the best. Candy is terrible for children. It rots their brain and their teeth. And babies don’t even have (many) teeth, so it’s totally appropriate to take it away from them. Keep the Whatchamacallits, donate the rest (to Aly Viny, NY, NY 10108).
9. Baby parties are better parties. Remember the time that huge Halloween party didn’t stress you out and gross you out and scare you, and you woke up the next morning looking and feeling great and so happy you went? Neither do I. Adios, sexy ghosts of Halloween parties past. Good-bye, walks of shame as an adult Care Bear. And never again will you accidentally buy flexible-hold gel and end up having to prop up your Sanjaya hair with Reynolds wrap and spend a night explaining to baked post-grads that you’re not a baked potato. Halloween parties with babies? Clearly better. Instead of spending 11 p.m. with 11 drunk Elevens, you’re living it up for 90 entire minutes at 3:30 p.m. with 11 Minions and a 12 pizzas. Party on, Wayne.
10. The aftermath isn’t disgusting - it’s actually kinda great. No walks of shame. No hangovers. No washing Sanjaya out of your hair and crying into that baked potato you’re weirdly craving. You bathe your little monkey or chicken or Dorothy, and as much as Halloween was a fun reprieve, you get your baby back. You put her to sleep and you’re on your couch at 9, watching Stranger Things with all the candy. You’re a parent, and that’s, well … scary. But you look around and you’re happy. And you’re home. And as the saying goes, there’s no place like it.
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