The Tin Man sees his father's costume for the first time. 

A more inclusive Wizard of Oz. (Our friend Heather and her son Sam, as pirate and bee respectively).

The Oz Family Singers. Baby looks perfect. Mom is super cute. Dad was unavailable so they found this guy at a garage sale. 

The Tin Man Cometh

First Halloween! Drum roll please.

Kiernan has the good fortune of having the coolest godparents in the world. They are incredibly generous, enormously talented, and happen to love him like nobody's business. One of them, Daniel, is a genius of costume design, so Halloween was his moment to step forward and shine. We expected him to do a good job, but he totally knocked our socks off.

We went back and forth for months trying to decide what Kiernan was going to be for his first Halloween. The word "we" at the beginning of the previous sentence is somewhat misleading. What I mean when I say "we went back and forth for months" is that Wendy brainstormed ideas for various costumes and I said the words "Jedi Knight" every time the subject came up. When I didn't say that, I said dopey things like, "He could go as a miniature version of one of the dudes from Reservoir Dogs." Looking back, it appears I was less than helpful.

I have two costumes I have worn for the last, oh, fifteen years of my life. Aside from one year when I let Wendy convince me we should go to a party as a pirate couple--that was the Pirates of the Caribbean year, and the real reason she wanted to do this was that she wanted to put mascara on me, hoping it would make me hot like Johnny Depp...um, yeah--I have pretty much worn one of those two costumes to every Halloween event. Those two costumes are, Jedi Knight and Reservoir Dogs dude.

Now, to be sure, I love the films associated with both costumes, but what really drove me to dress up as Jedi Knight and Reservoir Dogs dude was convenience. I have elements of those costumes in my wardrobe. Most helpfully, I have this awesome black bathrobe that goes all the way to the floor and has a huge black hood. Slap on some leather boots (leftovers from my Busch Gardens Ren-Faire days) and a cheap fake light saber, and presto-whammo, instant Jedi. Reservoir Dogs dude is similarly easy: old black blazer, thin black tie, black pants, cowboy boots, sunglasses and Zippo lighter. For good measure, a plastic disposable razor gets tucked into one boot. Simple, easy, stress-free, and aside from the constant guesses that I'm "one of the guys from Blues Brothers, right?" usually a respectably minor hit at parties.

So when it came time to think up costumes for Kiernan, it seemed natural just to get him on the same track as his father right away. That way we could go as a pair of Jedi Knights. His mother had other ideas.

As it turns out, better ideas. Much better.

One day she busted out with the idea that Kiernan could be the Tin Man for his first Halloween. My mouth was already opening to object, when she said, "It'll be perfect! Because of his new heart!" When she got to the part about his heart I shut right up, realizing I was never going to prevail against the brilliance of the idea. It was just too good. Then she mentioned that she should go as Dorothy. I edged toward the door. But there was no escape. "What are you going to be this year, honey?" I opened my mouth to speak. "And don't say Jedi Knight." I closed my mouth. "You have to pick something from Wizard of Oz."

For months I pretended I was going to be a flying monkey. Or Toto. I even threatened to hijack her Dorothy costume and go as the girl myself (without shaving my goatee, mind you), but she greeted that last idea with such demented enthusiasm that I dropped it immediately. I'm telling you, she's good.

In the end I went as Scarecrow, both because it was easy to cobble together and because Daniel reminded me, when he was over at the house one day taking Kiernan's measurements, that it would be thematically appropriate. Dorothy met the Scarecrow first, before meeting the Tin Man.

The Tin Man costume, as you can see from the pictures, turned out to be flat out awesome. Daniel first came over to take measurements, as I said above. Then he retired to his magical costume workshop (otherwise known as his dining room), spending long hours and late nights hammering away. One day he came back over and did a fitting. Wendy and I were giddy with excitement, unable to contain ourselves at how cool the thing looked. He took the head-piece and the pants back to his workshop to make alterations. Finally he had Kiernan and I come over to pick up the finished product.

Kiernan first wore the costume to a costume party at CSUN (California State University, Northridge, where Wendy is a professor) the Friday before Halloween. He was a huge hit. He next wore it to a party thrown by the Mom's Club Wendy joined a couple months ago. Again, a huge hit. We walked into the park and mouths just started hanging open. I'm not kidding. It was like being on the red carpet at the Oscars or something. Mothers dropped their plates of food and dashed for their cameras. Parents stood around us, calling Kiernan's name and snapping pictures. Video cameras rolled. Impromptu interviews transpired. Luckily, Kiernan took it all in stride, pretending to be more interested in the balloons that decorated the park than in the attention being lavished upon him. Smart kid.

The final time he wore the Tin Man costume was on Halloween itself, for trick-or-treating in our neighborhood. Our good friend Heather brought over her son Sam, dressed as the cutest little bee you ever did see, and we ventured out into the night. Our first house was next door, home of the World's Greatest Neighbor, Ramon, who came to the door in a Darth Vader outfit that would have put my silly Jedi costume to shame. Kiernan pointed at him and said, "Da-da." I was a little disappointed at this, not because he called somebody else by my title, but because he already seems to know the big reveal of Empire Strikes Back. I hope that doesn't spoil the films for him when we finally get to watch them together.

The godparents showed up and two of them, Daniel and Darren, joined us as we went through the neighborhood. His godmother, Renee, went back to the house to pass out candy. Trick-or-treating went very well. We even managed to pick up a lion in our travels. A family with an eighteen-month old moved in down the street and we've struck up a friendship with them, thanks to Wendy. We stopped by their house for candy and they answered the door with their little boy William in his lion costume, mostly. He was somewhat scared of the hood/mane, which worked out perfectly for us as a brave and fierce lion would have been totally wrong. His mother, Jessica, pulled on his hood and hit the streets with us. We did get a few funny looks because of Sam the bee and his mother Heather, the pirate. I guess those people have never seen the director's cut of Wizard of Oz. A bee and a pirate figure in quite prominently, in that version.

We all went back to the house to watch Kiernan eat dinner and Sam crawl around being cute. By this time Sam's father, Joe, had showed up dressed as Genghis Khan. When you see a bee and a pirate together, you really do get the sense that all they need to complete them is a Mongol conquerer on a motorcycle.

In the end, thanks to Daniel's talent and skill, and Wendy's tenacity and creativity, Halloween 2005 was a stunning success. The only problem for Daniel is that he has set the bar incredibly high for the years to come. At first, upon completion of the Tin Man, Daniel said, "Next year he's going as a box." But as the night progressed and the accolades came pouring in, you could already see the gears turning. And not just with him. With Darren, his husband and Kiernan's other godfather, you could see it too. Darren is to makeup design what Daniel is to costuming. Both of them just brilliant and creative. I could tell they were up to something. This was confirmed late in the evening when he asked me, "So...how many years do we have to wait before Wendy will let us make Kiernan into Chucky?"

Looks like my days of being a Jedi are truly over. Oh well, I guess change is good. And the Force will always be with me, especially when I get out of the shower.