Elbow deep in a pumpkin
With less than a week to go until Halloween, we finally got around to getting CJ to carve his pumpkin.
Times have changed since years ago. I remember when I was a kid we got a big spoon and a big knife and with a few swipes we would have carved out a basic face. Not nowadays, they have so many tools to cut up a pumpkin, you don’t know which one to buy. We’ve had the pumpkin carving kit for several years, so we were well prepared.
We started this adventure on Sunday with him. Fortunately, for us, the weather was perfect. It was a nice and sunny 60+ degree day, so we decided to go outside. After about 10 minutes of design choices he finally decided on the one that read “trick or treat”. After getting the lid removed CJ had the opportunity to get dirty by removing the “guts” of his orange creation. It took him a little getting use to. (He made several trips into the house to wash his covered hand from the ‘ick’ it had on it.) After the cleaning, dear old dad had to help out and clean up the rest of the remains. (I also made a quick trip to wash the ‘ick’ off too.) Then it was time to mark out the pumpkin. The way you do that is by putting the pattern on the pumpkin and putting dots over it so when you remove the paper you can see the shapes and “connect the dots” to cut it out. CJ decided to try and poke dots all over the design. Essentially, he made a straight line with a row of dots. He didn’t understand how it was suppose to be, but his mom showed him and he got the idea. He’s a very patient boy and did the entire pattern on his own with very little assistance.
Then came the best part – the carving! He took his time and was trying to stay on the dots as he slowly carved out the first “T”. Now when I say slowly I mean it! He didn’t want help either and it was getting close to dinner time. We told him to finish the “T” and we’ll get the rest tomorrow. He wanted to do the “Trick” part, but everyone was hungry and it was getting dark and cold outside, so we held off until Monday.
Monday rolled around and I got home from work, accosted by my son asking if we were going to carve the pumpkin. I said after dinner, which didn’t sit well with him, but he complied. After we ate, we covered the table and he continued on with the “R”. He was too excited and tried to cut it fast. I tried to explain it to him, but he was enjoying it too much. When he needed help I obliged. It took about an hour, but his creation was complete.
So, then I grab some nutmeg and cinnamon.
You might wonder why I did that. Many years ago, I saw on TV that if you put nutmeg and cinnamon on the lid of the jack-o-latern and light a candle in it, the candle heats the lid and it smells like pumpkin pie. (This has been something we’ve been doing for 10 years now!)
We grabbed the pumpkins and put them on the porch. After a few minutes of whining from CJ he finally helped on lighting his pumpkin.
He was so excited when he saw how it look lit up. Now he can’t wait until the next night to light it up again.
