The night before my third-grade son was going to be in a class play the following morning, he said, “Mom, I need a carrot costume tomorrow for the play.”

I knew about the play and was planning on going, but didn’t remember receiving any notification about costumes.

“Could you have maybe told me this earlier?” I asked. “The play is tomorrow, that doesn’t give us much time.”

Of course, even if I would have had more time, it’s not like I would have sewn a carrot costume from scratch or anything because I’m not so crafty, but I could have at least gotten him an orange shirt.

He started to get upset because he felt like how could he be a carrot if he didn’t have a carrot costume. “Don’t worry,” I said, “We’ll look around and see what we can find.”

I looked through his drawers. No orange shirt. Then I looked through his brothers’ drawers and found an orange long-sleeve shirt. It had a design on the front, but we could turn it inside-out.

Then I found a green alien hat that he happened to receive as a prize the previous week. If you put it on backwards, the three eyes faced the back and the front could pass as carrot greens. I went downstairs and showed him the shirt and the hat. His eyes lit up – he could see the possibility. “I also need a green mask,” he replied.

OK, a green mask. I remembered a superhero cape with mask that the boys had as toddlers. Perhaps we still had the green mask somewhere? I looked through the box where we kept costumes. No sign of the green mask but wait, what’s this?

I pulled out an orange costume from Halloween a couple years back that I had forgotten about. One of his older brothers had worn it, but now it was his size. I excitedly called A in the room to show him the great find. He tried it on, pulled the inside-out shirt on over it (to hide the design on the front of the costume) and put the green alien hat on backward. The green mask was forgotten – he had a carrot costume!

He was a great little carrot and it was a really cute play. All the kids should get all the credit because they worked hard and did a wonderful job (and the teacher, too, for making it all happen). But sometimes moms need to give themselves a little pat on the back, too, for pulling a carrot costume together in about 10 minutes on the night before the play.