Career Day "Dress Up"

Alex and Ryan had "Dress Like Your Future Career Day" at school recently. The school didn't exactly give us a whole lot of notice - around 14 hours, to be precise - so when I got the email in the afternoon, I made a mental list of what we could throw together at home. Their current future career choice are: a police officer for Ryan, and for Alex, an inventor. We did not have a police officer uniform, and other than a big white dress shirt, I wasn't sure what to do with inventor.

So we discussed our options at dinner. Ryan went with a professional soccer player, which was a good thing since the Target I stopped at on my route home had no police officer costumes in his size. He wore last year's Chelsea uniform, and voila! We had one "costume" set.

Alex didn't want to dress up. He didn't think anyone else would do so, and he's gotten to the age where peer pressure matters (sob!). After some discussion, he decided to be a spy. We had given him several spy items as a birthday present, so I knew we had the props to make this work. But spys wear black. And while we had a black t-shirt for him, we did not have any black pants. Nor did we have any long pants that currently fit him (at the rate he has been growing, I've put off buying jeans until we are closer to jean weather). So he ended up with camo shorts. Which is pretty much his everyday dress code.

I wasn't sure how welcome some of the props would be (the email from the principal only specificed no weapons), so I drove the boys to school so I could check with their teachers. On the way there, Alex decided he was not a secret soldier spy, kind of like Captain America. Also on the way there, we passed several kids walking and riding bikes on the way to school, and none of them were in costume. Alex got nervous, and before I had even parked the car, he had discarded his spy tool belt, his spy watch, and his spy night vision goggles hit the ground. Ryan's teacher wasn't thrilled with the soccer ball or the cleats, so we changed him into his normal shoes quickly. He then decided to roll down his soccer socks, too.

Thus, I ended up sending one boy to Career Dress Up day wearing a soccer jersey, rolled down blue socks, and Nike sneakers, and the other boy in his usual attire of a t-shirt and shorts. This does not bode well for the upcoming costume season as we head closer to October 31.