Not another dress-up day...

It's been a busy week year, and I've yet to reach that much-coveted feeling of having settled into my stride, when you realise you've have passed the "crisis management" post-New Year phase and settled into an almost mundane, repetitive weekly routine.  You don't know what I'm referring to? 

No, me neither.

Or at least I *think* I know what I am aiming for - in a kind of "I'll recognise it the minute I feel it" kind of way. Because we don't "do" routine here, or mundane, although I must admit some of us are genuine experts at "repetitive".

Despite being a true Aries in many respects, I actually don't need roller coaster levels of excitement. Boredom is really underrated in my opinion, or at least it is until the one or two days a year when I have more than the odd hour to myself and start wondering what on EARTH I am going to do with it!  (Get a dog/apply for a job/insert suitable knee-jerk response only applicable at that single point in time....) And with children on the Autism Spectrum, anything out of the ordinary is usually a recipe for disaster!

So on hearing that there was yet another "different" day in school my heart sank. World Book Day might sound idyllic but for kids who detest dressing up it's a tough call. For their parents it's a challenge set to bring the strongest parent to their knees. Such events are based on the assumption amongst teachers that children love dressing up. 

Not all, I assure you. 

The dilemma is always how do you create a costume adequate enough to:- 

1. avoid school thinking you couldn't be bothered, 
2. stop other parents thinking you forgot which day it was 
3. and most importantly to ensure your child agrees to put it on?

We've had some close calls. 

J was "Captain Underpants" years ago - wearing completely normal clothes with a white sheet for a cape and an extra pair of pants on top of his trousers. He lasted about twenty minutes in costume apparently, but I passed The Test. My parenting skills had come under scrutiny and I successfully passed those three important goals above!

Having achieved such tremendous success with this ingenious strategy I managed to persuade H to dress up one year for World Book Day - as Captain Underpants. (Well, it worked so well first time round, why not?) I think we even re-used the outfit for Children in Need Day one year......

Another year we pretended we HAD forgotten which day it was. H was rather confused by the end of the school day, but managed to survive unscathed!

This year, the reality dawned on me that my smallest two are really not-so-small after all, and with only a couple of World Book Days left each I decided to push the boat out. This year, my children's costumes would be the envy of the playground - or at least make the twins feel proud of our efforts and enjoy their day. Because after all, that's far more important, isn't it?....

We deliberated for ages, tried on costumes, and then put them together. They tried them on, wore them for (shock horror!) longer than an hour or so and decided they were, after all, quite fun to wear.

Result!!!

So here we have Mildred Hubble, The Worst Witch, and Doctor Proctor. (Last minute name change but no one noticed!!) It was worth it for the photo shoot - and the fact that for just one day, two of my children ENJOYED dressing up.

We did leave the broomstick in the school's prop cupboard though. By the end of the day it's function had changed to that of weapon rather than flying equipment - but I think it looked rather good, don't you?!!