Carving Day

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Originally uploaded by super rachel zana.

Yesterday was the long awaited pumpkin carving day at our house. Sarah and I visited a pumpkin patch in early October, choosing three large pumpkins to carve and bringing home many gourds and a few small pumpkins to paint. Sarah has been waiting patiently for carving day all month, and yesterday was the day.

After nap I plopped myself down on the kitchen floor with a knife and a gigantic metal bowl in which to place the slimy pumpkin guts. I sawed the top of the first pumpkin and let Sarah see the strings of orange slippery goo and gobs of pumpkin seeds inside. Her eyes were huge. "Sarah just watches," She informed me. So I took a metal spoon and scraped all the guts out of the pumpkin. Wanting to tactilly stimulate my toddler, I invited her to touch the inside of the pumpkin, to squish the slime around in her hand, to make a very large mess if she wished. She looked at me, seriously, and said, "Sarah doesn't do that." I guess she takes after her Grandma Robin. I, for one, could never pass up a good opportunity to make a nice mess.

After the inside was clean, I let her instruct me on how to cut up her pumpkin face. She decided on a squiggly, worried pumpkin mouth, two ears, which are not visible on the picture (Sarah's pumpkin is the bottom one) and two eyes. I thought the ears showed special creativity. I don't believe I had ever put ears on a jack-o-lantern before.

After we finished her pumpkin, Gregory carved his, the one with the round mouth. He had ideas of it spewing pumpkin guts like vomit out of it's mouth, but I "accidentally" threw the guts away in the garbage before the pumpkins went on display on our front steps. My contribution was the pumpkin on top in the picture, with two leaves. The leaves took a great deal of time to carve because they had so many little edges.

When it became dark we lit our "scary pumpkins."