A few weeks before Halloween, we went shopping to find costumes for the boys. I’m all for creative home made costumes normally – but not for toddlers. For toddlers, I want something we can just zip on and not worry about: quick to put on, quick to take off, and we can throw it in the laundry when it gets sticky.

In any case, we were wandering through Target, when we found the Tigger costume. It was, I must admit, ridiculously cute: a full tigger body suit – complete with tail and head. C loved it the moment he saw it on the rack: “Tigger! Tigger!”

Being the pragmatic folk that we are, we took it off the rack and had him try it on. It fit perfectly. C looked at me and gave a little hop, too which I responded with my best Tigger immitation: “Hoo-hoo hoo hoo-oo!”

We decided he could wear it to checkout. After a little way through the store (with C hopping along behind us), he called out. “Hey! It’s not working!”

We looked back to see him twisting around to look at his backside. Finally he bent over, grabbed the tail, and pulled it through his legs. Then he brought his legs together tightly to hold it in place. Once he got it figured out, he stood there holding the tip of his tail that was sticking out from between his legs. Looking up at us, he said “It doesn’t work. Daddy, it doesn’t work.”

I knelt down next to him. “What doesn’t work?”

I was trying pretty hard not to smile. The way he was holding the tail made him look like the world’s most well-endowed two-legged tiger getting ready to take a wiz.

He shook the tip of the tail. “It doesn’t work. It doesn’t bounce.”

For those of you that don’t watch the Winnie The Pooh cartoon, Tigger bounces on his tail. When it’s not acting like a regular twitchy tail, it acts like a coiled spring that he can bounce off of. C was upset that he couldn’t bounce on his new Tigger tail.

We explained to him that this was just a costume, that it didn’t bounce like the regular Tigger. After a while, he decided this was okay. He let go of the tail, and we went back to hopping our way through Target.