Editorial by Leigh Ripley

My little pumpkins.
The first Halloween costume I purchased for my children was a little orange pumpkin suit – for ages 4 to 6 months.

As luck would have it, all three of my girls were born exactly 12 days apart during mid-summer. This made it easy to seasonally coordinate hand-medowns over the years – starting with the pumpkin suit.

My firstborn was literally downing in it. She was a tiny little thing and the costume was definitely wearing her, and not the other way around.

Same for my second born. I remember worrying that the suit was going to consume her head and suffocate her.

And then came the third. Unfortunately for both of us, I just assumed it would fit her.

She was a very large baby, too large to stuff into the pumpkin from top to bottom, so I got creative and cut the lower half off and tucked the top into a pair of orange leggings. Her neck was so chubby I couldn’t zip the costume up in its entirety, as I was afraid of choking her. Her double chin spilled over the top of the neck, the arms were too short and she looked more like an orange meatloaf than a pumpkin.

We handed down a lot of clothes and costumes in my house over the years, but none received as much love as that pumpkin suit. And yes, I kept it…well, the top half at least.