Mommy's First Halloween

Oh yeah, Halloween...so just when I think I've gotten the "cool mom" thing down, something happens to call my bluff--like, I actually have to leave the house.  That is where things usually start to go wrong.  Clearly, if I am to be an effortlessly hip parent, I am going to need some more practice.  For those of you aspiring to this end someday, I have some recommendations: go find a heavy, unhappy bowing ball.  Place it in a car seat and drag it around town.  Try to look skinny and not at all burdened.  Then, get home and take all the things in your living room and toss them in the air.  Because, for some reason, that is what living rooms have to look like after a child comes in to your life.  No real explanation, just a fact.  Try to pick up while either A) holding the bowling ball or B) while the bowling ball sleeps for 26 minutes. GO.
Now it's Halloween.  A new week of WTFParent. First year holidays have always been a mystery to me.  He has no teeth. He can barely eat the Kit Kats I give him now! What is he going to do with a bag full? So we have to pick out a costume.  Obviously, a Star Wars costume is in order...oh wait, our niece is going to be a witch and wants Isaac to match.  The girl wants to use our son as an accessory? Ok! He's a bat.  Problem solved.  Only we got invited to this party and...maybe I should just knit him a Yoda costume. Today. No big.  I'm cool. I have a blog and I knit things and enable my husband's Star Wars problem. This will be a breeze. Also, everyone will think I'm awesome (as in: I will inspire in them an awe like no other when they behold my perfect son's Yoda hat). I am going to make my costume today as well.  And Occupy Wall Street.  And clean. And start boyman on peas, which I will make myself (I can't believe I didn't grow any this summer) and nurse every feeding, too, because I have been relying too much on the bottle.
I hate the guy who shows up to the party AT 7:00.  Whenever I host a party, I invite one of my closest friends to arrive at 6:45 just to insulate me from 7:00 guy. "Wow! Hi! Look at you! Right on time! And with a sheet pizza! Even though it's a dinner party.  Awesome.  Can I take your coat?" So today, after making 2 costumes, experimenting with peas, going to the craft store at 3pm on the Saturday before Halloween (cause I'm not only a hip and cool Do It Yourself-er, I was also born yesterday), getting both cranky Yoda, his witchy cousin and myself ready for the party...it was only 6:27. "Everybody in the car! Not you Jackson, Good Lord, why EVERY TIME that I call the dog he's deaf and suddenly I say 'car' and he can fucking hear? Look out, Jackson.  Lookout. Lookout. Lookout lookout lookout! Isaac, I know, we're going. Reilly, get your broom. Do I have my phone? Do you have my phone? No, I do. Do I have the baby? Do I have the keys?..." This seems endless. Nope. Losing all sorts of cool by the second, I get the masses (minus the seriously dejected canine) into the car, determined not to be the 7:00 guy.  How in the world am I running ahead of schedule? As I drive aimlessly around town, trying to kill time and lull the baby into a deep, blissful sleep that will allow me to have fun, I school Reilly on the art of being "fashionably late". We talk about when it is ok to be late, when it is never ok and when it is  preferred. 6:55.  "ok! Who wants McDonalds?!" Cool Auntship redeemed, child fed, time squandered, cooperate profits expanded, conscience crushed...now it is finally 7. Only 20 more minutes...
At the party: Isaac screamed at every loving, wonderful and dear former mother of an infant who tried to take him off my hands for 5 seconds, Reilly looked like the most miserable witch of all time, dire and as serious as a child can be at a Halloween party that features mini-quiche; Isaac ate the feathers of my bird costume, and as he grabbed a fistful, I remembered just how allergic I am to feathers and hoped that eating them is not, somehow, the same as sleeping on them. Reilly went home, Isaac feigned enjoyment, no one, not one person said "what an  AMAZING hat! and YOU made it?! TODAY?!"...all in all...Never Again. 
I lost this round, folks.  I tried. I did all the right things. Everything was so homemade, so simple and so wonderful. It matched.  It wasn't overdone. It was miserable. In the mirror, as I poured myself the great glass of wine I so richly deserved, I saw a zombie.  No really.  The eye makeup I wore to accentuate my Crow or Raven costume (whatever), had positively smeared under my eyes. Yes. My $3.99 eyeshadow failed me. Staring back at me was the zombie with which I threaten my infant son (a practice I plan to continue, by the way). It's not that I resemble or relate to the walking dead (though I do). It is not that having a babe robs you of your humanity and leaves you a (metaphorical) brain-sucking nobody (and it does)...  Not the problem. It's just that I talked to people. All night. While I looked like this. Somehow thinking I was pulling this whole thing off. Cool-O-Meter reading: Zero.