The mediocre mommy has returned.

It's Red Ribbon Week at schools across the nation, and with it comes different dress up instructions for each day of the week. At my sons' school, Monday was wear your shirt backwards day ("Turn Your Back on Drugs"), Tuesday was wear red ("Take a Stand for a Drug Free Land"), and Wednesday, today, is dress as your favorite book character day ("It Takes Character to Take a Stand Against Drugs").
Seriously?  Dress as your favorite book character?

This sounded complicated when I glanced over the Red Ribbon Week flyer in the abyss of both boys' Monday folders last week, but it turned out not to be so complicated because I promptly forgot all about it. I suppose I subconsciously thought it sounded like too much work and totally blocked it out.

Too bad Tucker Hickman is my kid. Tucker likes to do what he's told (unless his parents tell him to do something, but that's a different blog), and that includes when he's told to dress a certain way. While I had forgotten all about the dress up day, Tucker had been plotting his costume.

Tucker came home Tuesday and filled me in on his plan, "Mom, I'm going to be Ronde and Jackson is going to be Tiki. I need a Bucs jersey for tomorrow."

Seriously? How on earth was I to find a Ronde Barber Tampa Bay Buccaneers jersey in College Station, Texas, in one night? I didn't know what to do, so I gave him the standard Mediocre Mommy reply, "Let's talk about it after baths," secretly hoping he would forget all about it.

But he's Tucker, and I know better.

He hatched an elaborate plan to paint a white tee shirt into a jersey, and he even knew about fabric paint we had that I had forgotten all about. "All we need is brown," he instructed, and Trey and I immediately got sucked into his scheme.

As we talked this jersey-creation through, Keaton came proudly into the living room holding an old Batman costume and a Batman book. He was ready for dress like a book character day without me even lifting a finger. I love that kid.

But his display of independence was not up to Tucker's standards. Here's the conversation that ensued:

Tucker: Keaton, you cannot be Batman. He is not a book character.

Me: He's holding a Batman book in his hands right now.

Tucker: It doesn't matter. Batman is a movie. You are not allowed to dress as a character from a movie. There can be a movie about the book, but the book had to come first.

Me: Who says?

Tucker: Mrs. C. (his super-awesome GT teacher). We talked about how it's not really a book character unless the first place the character appeared is in a book. He can't be Batman. It's not dress like a movie character day. We talked about it in class. He can't do it.

Me (beginning to get frustrated with Mr. Literal): Well, maybe when you're in kindergarten you can dress like Batman. And Batman was a comic book first, anyway (I'm not sure if that's true, but I said it convincingly). And you worry about your own costume, not Keaton's. He can make his own decisions about things, you know.

But the battle was lost. Tucker said Keaton couldn't be Batman, so Keaton wouldn't, under any circumstances, be Batman. I wish I had that kind of pull, but hey, I'm just the mom.

Keaton and I flopped ourselves down in front of the bookshelf and began pouring through books. "I know!" he said, "I'll be a panda from Panda Bear, Panda Bear." Then "I know! I'll be Buzz Lightyear!"  Clearly he was unaware that Buzz didn't fit Tucker's stringent criteria for costumes, but it didn't matter because we don't happen to have a Buzz costume laying around the house.

Finally, at 8:00 p.m., just 30 minutes before bed time, I gave up. I told Trey I was going to Walmart to get brown paint and that while I was gone he needed to convince Keaton to be Max from Where the Wild Things Are. I planned to get a headband and attach some wolf ears, put him in pants and sweatshirt, and we'd be good to go.

At Walmart, I marched straight back to the craft section and began glaring, wide-eyed, at all of the possible craft products. Wolf ears. What could I make wolf ears out of?  I left there with brown felt, pipe cleaners, and a headband.

I ran back into the house around 8:20, and I threw the brown paint at Trey and asked where Keaton was.

"In his room crying," he said. "I gave up."

Determined, I went to his room and scooped him up into my arms. He wasn't just crying, he was sobbing quiet little puffs of tears as if his whole world had been ruined by this one dress up day. I felt like my poor planning had caused this great despair and I knew I had to fix it. I managed to calm him down, and back to the bookshelf we went.

I came up with three choices: Max from Where the Wild Things Are, a cowboy from Lasso the Moon, or a builder from I Love Trucks. The builder was a stretch because the book is just about big construction trucks, but, whatever, I was desperate.

He was happy for a moment, and then he once again dissolved into broken-hearted sobs. I realized then that this was a futile effort. He was too tired to care about a costume and until he got some sleep it would never be right. I put him in his bed, covered him up, and stretched out beside him hoping he would cry himself to sleep.

As his eyes began to slowly close and open, close and open, he asked, "What about my costume?"

"Baby, I will make all three costumes and lay them out in the living room floor and you can choose any one that you want when you get up in the morning," I cooed into his ear.

Wait. What? What did I just say I would do?  I looked around the room to see if anyone else was there. Was that me talking?  Did I just say I would put together three costumes between now and tomorrow?  Someone must have slipped me something because I was clearly out of my mind.

To make matters worse, this possibility perked Keaton right up. "I want to help you put them together. Let's do it now!" he exclaimed, and realizing that this situation was getting worse by the minute, I agreed.

I assigned him the task of finding tools for the builder costume, and I joined Trey at the table where he was furiously fabric-painting Barber's Bucs jersey. Quickly, I broke out the pipe cleaners for the wolf ears. It was then that I remembered something very important.

I am not crafty.

I stared blankly at the felt and the pipe cleaners, and it occurred to me that they should sell hard liquor next to the craft supplies at Walmart. After a moment of hesitation, I dove in, cutting pipe cleaners into ear-shaped thingys and twisting them around the headband. It looked pretty good, if I do say so myself, but then I had another problem.

How in the hell was I going to get felt onto pipe cleaners?

I folded and cut and wrapped and unfolded and unwrapped, but the task seemed impossible. There was no way this was going to work, and I really wanted to just drop it all on the table and crawl into bed and pretend that "dress like a book character day" had never even been mentioned in our house.

But Keaton saved me. He got so excited looking for tools that after we finished putting together the builder costume he forgot about the other two. Trey finished blow-drying the back of the Barber jersey, successfully painted the jersey front, and the boys went to bed only 30 minutes past bedtime.

Miracle of miracles, this morning Keaton woke up, put his builder costume and "tool belt" on (I affixed tools to a regular belt with pipe cleaners -- I guess they were good for something after all), and proudly went off to school carrying a copy of I Love Trucks.

And dress like a book character day was a success. A painful one, but a success nonetheless.