Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Mailbag
There've been a couple of treats for Georgia in the mail this week.
Monday saw the delivery of her very own bounce-house, which we were able to inflate and test out for the first time yesterday.
(And for those who might assume this is a case of us spoiling the kid, well, obviously, but spoiling her in a cost effective manner. Buying the thing outright was only twice as much as renting it once for four hours. As soon as we've aired it up three times it'll have paid for itself. We'd be losing money not to buy a bounce-house, see?)
Anyway, yesterday's mail also brought a treat. Georgia had planned on being Bubbles from Powerpuff Girls for Halloween this year, until she decided last week that none of the other kids would have any idea who she was supposed to be. (Georgia runs into this a fair amount. It's one of the downsides of having so many of your entertainment choices being "time-shifted" by years or decades by a geek parent with a huge media library. She's always baffled that other kids don't know who Bullwinkle and Rocky are, or that they've never seen an episode of Dino Boy.)
In any event, Allison spent some time searching online, and in short order we had the solution.
I have never, in my entire life, had a costume as awesome as that. And this was just one of the dozens of choices available to her. (Me, I voted for the Velma costume, which looked amazing, but Georgia stuck with Ginormica from Monsters Vs. Aliens.) What you can't quite see in this photo is the level of detail in this costume. They managed to get all of the little bells and whistles on there, the insignias on the sleeve and such. Even the cars on the feet are the right colors. Allison and I remember all too well the days of Collegeville and Ben Cooper costumes, which basically amounted to a molded mask and a big plastic bag. If you wanted a Batman costume, you had to content yourself with one that had "BATMAN" printed across the chest and forehead. We get catalogs in the mail this time of year for costumes, and we cannot shut up about how awesome all of the kids costumes are these days. If I'd been able to get a Luke Skywalker costume like this as a kid, I wouldn't ever have taken it off. (As it was I wore a karate gi and black-rubber-rainboots around for years, pretending it looked right.)
It balances out, though. The other day Georgia and I sat on the couch watching cartoons and eating Frankenberry, which no store around here carries but which Target stocks for a limited time around Halloween. Georgia normally eats Cheerios, or maybe Lucky Charms if she's in a crazy mood, neither of which are anywhere near as sugar-laden as the best cereals of the old days. Sitting there and eating cereal that is 30% sugar, slipping into a diabetic coma, I told Georgia that while her generation may have more entertainment options, and better Halloween costumes, and cooler video games, my generation had breakfast cereal...
Monday saw the delivery of her very own bounce-house, which we were able to inflate and test out for the first time yesterday.
(And for those who might assume this is a case of us spoiling the kid, well, obviously, but spoiling her in a cost effective manner. Buying the thing outright was only twice as much as renting it once for four hours. As soon as we've aired it up three times it'll have paid for itself. We'd be losing money not to buy a bounce-house, see?)
Anyway, yesterday's mail also brought a treat. Georgia had planned on being Bubbles from Powerpuff Girls for Halloween this year, until she decided last week that none of the other kids would have any idea who she was supposed to be. (Georgia runs into this a fair amount. It's one of the downsides of having so many of your entertainment choices being "time-shifted" by years or decades by a geek parent with a huge media library. She's always baffled that other kids don't know who Bullwinkle and Rocky are, or that they've never seen an episode of Dino Boy.)
In any event, Allison spent some time searching online, and in short order we had the solution.
I have never, in my entire life, had a costume as awesome as that. And this was just one of the dozens of choices available to her. (Me, I voted for the Velma costume, which looked amazing, but Georgia stuck with Ginormica from Monsters Vs. Aliens.) What you can't quite see in this photo is the level of detail in this costume. They managed to get all of the little bells and whistles on there, the insignias on the sleeve and such. Even the cars on the feet are the right colors. Allison and I remember all too well the days of Collegeville and Ben Cooper costumes, which basically amounted to a molded mask and a big plastic bag. If you wanted a Batman costume, you had to content yourself with one that had "BATMAN" printed across the chest and forehead. We get catalogs in the mail this time of year for costumes, and we cannot shut up about how awesome all of the kids costumes are these days. If I'd been able to get a Luke Skywalker costume like this as a kid, I wouldn't ever have taken it off. (As it was I wore a karate gi and black-rubber-rainboots around for years, pretending it looked right.)
It balances out, though. The other day Georgia and I sat on the couch watching cartoons and eating Frankenberry, which no store around here carries but which Target stocks for a limited time around Halloween. Georgia normally eats Cheerios, or maybe Lucky Charms if she's in a crazy mood, neither of which are anywhere near as sugar-laden as the best cereals of the old days. Sitting there and eating cereal that is 30% sugar, slipping into a diabetic coma, I told Georgia that while her generation may have more entertainment options, and better Halloween costumes, and cooler video games, my generation had breakfast cereal...
