Carving Pumpkins

"Daddy, I want my pumpkin to look scary, with a scary face like this." (see above photo)

Mike carves a face

"And I want it to have scary arms that swing like this" (Little Man swings his arms in this halting, mechanical way that has us shaking with laughter round our table piled high with pumpkin guts).

Mike carves some arms on the side of the pumpkin

"And scary legs like this"

Mike isn't sure what to do about legs

And here's the result. Does the the pumpkin face resemble Little Man's? I'll let you be the judge.

Kiwi also requested a scary pumpkin, but I was her partner and am only capable of carving triangle eyes and noses with the jack-o-lantern smiles with the square teeth alternating on top and bottom (invariably, however, I always end up cutting out some of the teeth I wanted to stay in).

She's two though and she thought it was perfect. We put them on the porch and lit the candles. The wind was blowing and Mike commented on how it was going to blow the candles out. We let the kids blow them out instead and headed inside for bed time.

After tucking her snugly in with teddy bear, a sippy cup, several books, and two blankets, I returned to Kiwi's room to find her crying.

When I asked what was wrong she responded with,

"No pumpkins blow away." After talking to her, I realized she was worried that her and Little Man's pumpkins were going to blow away.

She could not be pacified until I promised that I would bring the pumpkins in the house. And you better believe that the first thing I did upon coming down the stairs was to bring those pumpkins into the entry way. I knew they weren't going to blow away, but I certainly was not going to risk some teen-ager prankster smashing our "scary" pumpkins on the street.

Happy Halloween week!