I threw open the playroom door like a woman on a mission. Which I was. I scanned the room and spotted it--the Ariel costume. Alexis has been wearing the darn thing so much lately that she hasn't managed to put it back in the closet for even a second.
It was time for me to make the costume "go swimming with the fishes."
Not permanently, mind you. Just for the next few weeks . . . long enough to be sure that it won't make the trip to Florida with us later this month.
We're headed back to Orlando again, with a few days at Disney World certainly high on the agenda. The appointment is scheduled for Bibbiddi Bobbiddi Boutique, of course. Once you've let your kid get princessified, there's no going back. I always make her pick a costume from her stash to take with us. The ones sold in the parks are equal to the quality of those sold at The Disney Store, but at double the price. Actually, considering I buy her costumes/dress-up clothes at The Disney Store during Halloween clearance season, the cost difference is probably close to the equivalent of 25 trips to Starbucks.
She has plenty to pick from . . . Cinderella and Snow White, Tinkerbell and Alice, Jasmine and Aurora, they're all hanging in that closet. And, yet, this year she swears she wants to wear Ariel.
Which, UGH.
The husband and I agree. The costume is fine for playing dress-up, and it's probably one of the better Ariel costumes out there. However, it's still hideous and ill-fitting and generally nowhere near as cute as her other choices. In fact, out of her entire closet of dress-up clothes, it's the only costume I genuinely don't like.
Since we are in agreement that the costume needs to stay home when the kid gets princessified, I figured the best way to handle the situation was to make it disappear. Now. It's like pulling off the Band-Aid. If you wait until the last second, the pain is fresh. I'd rather have time for the pain to dull.
The kid will never know I'm behind the disappearance. She is horrible about hanging her costumes back up, so if one disappears, she just won't know where she left it. She remembers where she left the silver high-heel Barbie shoe, but she doesn't remember where she throws clothes when she takes them off.
She won't know, the disappearance is for the greater good, and there is a united parental front behind the scheme, but yet I chickened out. I CHICKENED OUT.
I stood over that horrible costume, my face twisted in an evil genius grimace, and then stormed right back out of the playroom empty-handed.
I need to grow a pair. STAT.