Cookie Robot. Closet Robot.

Robeox. Our six-year-old Charlie's invention (meant to name him Robox, how clever, but misspelled when he wrote it on his back in Sharpie.) His head is fancy organic peanut butter cookies, but his body is just a plain old variety pack of cherry, grape and orange popsicles.







This is the robot costume we made for Charlie two Halloweens ago. It now hangs in his closet.

I keep waiting for it to become self-aware in there and then start controlling our minds, which strangely but innocently begins with our two-year-old Sam randomly placing metal tributes like errant silverware and bits of foil in the closet, and culminates with all of us becoming moon-eyed shut ins that cocoon the entire boys' bedroom in baking tins, foil and wire clothes hangers.

It could happen.

What's funny is the other day we got the flyer for our neighborhood picnic and among the activities including pie contest and moonbounce was "robot contest." We were like, what does that mean? Like robot costume contest? 'Cause will break that baby out and take home the blue ribbon. But we were afraid to show up with Charlie in this elaborate robot costume and have it turn out to be something else entirely. We know we're a bit over the top and kind of freak people out sometimes.

Turns out it was a robot dance contest.

But can I just say, if they had handed out a blue ribbon (which they didn't, they just pulled names randomly from a box... blast!) Charlie would have been the hands-down winner. I swear, when he got out there on the grassy knoll by the park gazebo and some thirtysomething neighbor dad started blasting Beastie Boys... Charlie was like a six-year-old Beck meets James Brown meets Napoleon Dynamite. He even tried to pop n' lock.

As children started to move back to make room for him, I acted all stunned and innocently amused from the sidelines... but I wonder if our neighbors could tell that I used to force him to watch So You Think You Can Dance with me, or sometimes flip the cable tv musical genre channels as I make him change styles, and say things like "use your whole body!" "use your chest!" "use your neck!""use your butt!" and then "let me see it in your eyes!"

Apparently we don't even need costumes to stick out like the crazies that we are. Wait, I have to stop writing now, I suddenly have a strange compulsion to stack all my pie tins in the boys' closet...

Right, like I own pie tins.