Brilliant Disguise

May the Force Be With You

Nonna and Ben walked Nori the whole way home from the parade.

I have no perspective on Nori and Charlie's size. For Halloween, I ordered costumes online and when they arrived I barely took them out of their packaging before deciding that they would be enormous. I was so sure that they would be too big that I had Bryan ask Sara to bring them costumes to wear to the Halloween parade held the week before Halloween. They looked adorable dressed as Cookie Monster and a Firefighter and Charlie's replacement costume earned him a shot in the driver's seat of the local fire truck. However, I was really stuck on having them dressed in theme, so I took a second look at the costumes, holding Charlie's up to my leg so that Bryan could confirm that they would never fit them. Bry's face, instead of registering agreement with my assessment, looked puzzled.

"I think that will fit him perfectly."

"No," I protested. "That would be impossible. There is no way he is this big."

He is, in fact, that big. Nori fit perfectly in her costume as well. We attended the rest of our Halloween events as Princess Lea and Luke Skywalker, receiving even more attention than usual.

When they were born, I really had no real idea of how small they were. I wasn't ever scared to hold them, cuddle them, change their diapers. The bath scared me a little, but it was a little awkward to bathe them in tupperware. I would shop for clothes in the Tampa Babies-r-Us, and even once we were home, and they would swim in the ensembles I chose. And now, on more than one occasion, I have bought things that fit them for a day, if at all. Some things have gone right back or to someone else without ever being worn. I spent a lot of energy wishing them to be bigger and now that they are "bigger," I can't seem to catch up. They have been disguised as three months younger (maybe more) than their actual age for so long and now they are closer to looking like other children their age. There is obvious comfort in that for me, but I still have not quite accepted it, like I wasn't sure it could happen.