As most parents know, late nights and kid-free shenanigans mean nothing come the light of day as your children clamber into your bed for their morning snuggles and family cartoon time.  Thankfully, after anticipating a big night with potentially dire consequences last night, it was only the lack of sleep that caused any grief today after heading to bed at around 2.30am.

Sanity has now been preserved and great laughs with a bunch of really fabulous people were had… although I could have definitely settled in and had a few more of these…

But thankfully we decided to pull up stumps when we did and I was grateful when I awoke at 8am to discover that I was feeling pretty good, if somewhat doughy-headed due to lack of sleep.  As usual (although thankfully hours later) Miss B came in to watch cartoons and I began my morning ritual of checking the news, social media and of course my dashboard to see if there were likes or comments on my posts overnight! (I can live in hope right?).  As we had plans to attend a 3rd birthday party later that morning, I thought I’d best double check what time it started.  And as I did, I read the line:

P.S. he is having a superhero party so dress your kiddies in the best superhero costume!! 🙂

Oh shit!

After feeding Miss A, we dragged ourselves out of bed to get ourselves ready for the 10am party… It was 8.45am.  Eeek!  The hubby was lamenting the fact that even late nights now hurt in the morning and although I was in complete agreement, I was too busy racking my brain for not one, but 2 suitable costume ideas for the girls.  So whilst the hubby got to work on sorting out breakfast, I made a mad dash to pull it all together.

I ended up googling female superheroes for inspiration!  This was pretty much the offering out there:

Other than Wonder Woman, most of the other icon female ‘Super-people’ are actually villains.  Or they are the female version of the iconic male heroes that I’ve not actually ever known as a stand alone superhero – Superwoman? Batgirl? She-Spider? and ummm… Robin Chick? Or maybe it’s Robyn???  I don’t even know what they were called.

And then I figure, the line between superheroes and supervillains is a blurry one right? And you can’t have superheroes without villains so I figured that’s what Miss B could go as – whatevs! (Yes, I actually said to myself – Whatevs – like a 17 year old high school student!). But I didn’t care, I just needed to pull together something quick.  Just like I needed to wrap the present, find a birthday card, sort out nappy bags and bottles, track down wayless shoes, eat the omelette my hubby thought appropriate as a breakfast option given the timeframe!  Oh, and get dressed myself… must not leave the house in PJs coz ain’t nobody got time for that (sorry, that just popped into my head and it’s such a crack up I had to share!).  C’mon… I’ve had no sleep remember!

So, we were now down to an hour and 15 mins!  I was cutting and sewing and drawing and face painting and wrapping and prepping and in spite of all the faffing about, we managed to pull it together and get out of the house by 10am.  Here’s what we ended up with….

Meet Catgirl and Superbaby! Now you might note that Superbaby has her nappy on the outside.  Makes sense right?  The hubby didn’t get it!  Maybe it was his lack of sleep because I didn’t think my humour was that far out and when I reminded him that all good superheroes wore their undies on the outside he didn’t think it was that funny.  And here I was mentally high-fiving my brilliance in coming up with a costume that was A) quick, B) realistically achievable for a 6 month old and C) a bit funny! So I was feeling a bit smug when we turned up to the party and people laughed at ‘nappy on the outside’.  Ha-haaa! They got it! See hubby, that’s how it’s done!!!

So that’s how Sunday was spent in our household! And of course the moral of this story is that despite the lack of sleep or the challenges that get thrown at you (erm, forget and then realise at the last minute), or the fact that the nap you were so looking forward to was unceremoniously cut short before it even started with the unexpected arrival of in-laws (cue express clean up of bomb site aka kitchen!) or the ratty, sugar loaded child that woke up when she heard Nan’s voice, the real superheroes of the world are the Mums!

Do late nights cause you just as much grief as a hangover these days too? Ever had to pull together a costume at the last minute?