It's 9:40 on Halloween night, and our dining table is covered in candy sorted into eleven categories, one of which is labeled "suspicious." Maya made the labels. Nico is asleep on the couch in a khaki shirt with the sleeves rolled four times, still wearing his ranger hat, holding a flashlight that is still on.
Both costumes were homemade this year, mostly because both kids knew exactly what they wanted to be by September, and nothing in the stores matched what was in their heads.
Ranger Nico
Nico has wanted to be a park ranger for Halloween since he took the Junior Ranger oath at Sugarlands in June. Store-bought ranger costumes exist, but he looked at one and said the hat was "wrong," which it was. Here's what we put together instead:
- A khaki button-up shirt from a thrift store, $4, an adult small that hangs to his knees. Dana took in the sides with safety pins, and we rolled the sleeves until his hands came out.
- A flat-brimmed felt hat from a party store, $9. Dana held the crown over the steam from the kettle and pinched four dents into the top, like a real ranger hat. It took three tries and one burned thumb, hers.
- His real Junior Ranger badge from the Everglades, pinned on crooked. He pinned it himself, and nobody was allowed to straighten it.
- A name tag that says RANGER NICO in Maya's best block letters.
- Binoculars made from two toilet paper rolls, tape and string, plus a small flashlight on a lanyard.
He also insisted on carrying a plastic grocery bag for trash, because rangers protect the park. He picked up nine candy wrappers other kids had dropped along our route and handed each one to me like evidence.
Maya's sea turtle
Maya, who plans to study sea turtles when she grows up, went as a green sea turtle, and she was very clear that it was a green sea turtle and not a generic one. Her shell is cardboard from the box our new screen shelter came in. She cut an oval about as long as her back and drew the scutes in pencil from a photo in a library book: five plates down the middle and four along each side, counted twice. Then she painted it olive and brown with two bottles of craft paint, $3.50 each, and outlined every plate in black marker.
The straps came off an old backpack, hot-glued on and then duct-taped when the glue gave up. With a green hoodie, green leggings and the hood up for a head, it worked. She added one detail I never would have thought of: a small paper tag on her left wrist, like the tags researchers put on a turtle's flipper. When a neighbor called her "a cute little tortoise," she explained the difference politely, and at some length.
Our route, and the weather
This was the first Halloween I can remember in Miami without sweating through a costume. The front that came through on Sunday night has hung on all week. At 6:15, when we headed out, it was 76 degrees with a dew point near 60 and a light breeze from the north. Dana traded a shift weeks ago so she could come, and I carried my black hiking backpack with water, a spare flashlight and the candy overflow.
Our loop was about 1.6 miles through our part of Kendall, 41 houses with porch lights on, from 6:15 to a little after 8. A few things that worked for us:
- We walked the loop in daylight last Sunday so Nico knew where we were going and Maya could plan it, which of course she did, on paper.
- Both kids wore their camp headlamps. Hands free for candy, and easy for drivers to see.
- We stopped at our own house halfway for water and a bathroom, and so Pickles could glare at us through the front window. He has spent most of the evening under our bed because of the doorbell.
Isabela, our neighbor's daughter and Pickles's regular sitter, was handing out candy on her front step. Nico swore her in as a Junior Ranger on the spot, with the oath, mostly accurate. She kept a straight face and raised her right hand, which I appreciated more than she knows.
The two costumes came to about $24, counting a new glue stick. Maya counted 93 pieces of candy. Nico counted 87, then recounted and got 91, and nobody can check, because he's asleep on the bag. For once, both of his shoes came home.
