"is that a real baby?"

Last night Clara went to her first Halloween party. Chria, Michael, and I have known this party was coming up since, oh, LAST HALLOWEEN, yet we continued the fine Hazlitt tradition of scrambling around the greater Los Angeles area at 4:00 on the day of the party trying to create brilliant costumes. And also true to tradition, we discovered we were not the only ones with the same great idea. Ugh.

Truth be told, Mike did most of the scrambling. Chria and I, miraculously, were able to pull together a decent conceptual costume from the resources found in the comfort of our own home: teenage parents. The crest on my shirt says "St. Agnes' School for Unfortunate Young Mothers."


Clever, right?

But we needn't have worried. As it turns out, we could have showed up at the party stark naked and nobody would have noticed, since we were in the company of a six-week old sleeping baby girl disguised as a bear. The cuddliest, cutest, baby bear EVER.



She was a marvelous prop. Uncle Mike* got loads of attention from adoring fairies, vampiresses, and wolfmen, and when I had her in the Bjorn, people were surprised to learn she was actually a real baby. Chria and I decided there were two camps: those who were impressed, and those who thought we were horrible parents to bring an infant to a party with tesla coils and pole dancers. We decided they were just jealous they didn't have a baby bear of their own.

*bonus prize to anyone who can tell me who Mike is supposed to be.