Friday, October 27, 2006

The Great Pumpkin

A very special tradition was started in my home this week. Hub, Incrediboy and I made our first jack-o-lantern as a family. It was an emotional journey at times … Hub picked out the huge, most perfectly perfect pumpkin out of a thousand last weekend and we brought it home. I scrubbed the crud off of it and set up our dining table with newspapers, spoons, knives, and a huge bowl. Incrediboy was very excited about all the commotion. But when I went to draw a face on it, he began putting together what was about to happen and got very upset. Cutting up his precious pumpkin was NOT on his itinerary.

Being that we didn’t want to traumatize the boy, we stopped - and thought it best to let the concept sink in. And the next day, just like that, Incrediboy had made his peace and was ready to proceed.

We couldn’t get to the project again until last night, but we did continue on. Hub cut a lid in the big gourd and Incrediboy was very interested in the stringy stuff inside. After we loosened up all the goop, scooping it out was about the coolest thing he’d ever heard of, and he really enjoyed helping us with that. Hub helped, and I helped, and we alternated taking pictures as good doting parents do. We all had a ball.

When the pumpkin was cleaned out, we set it aside to dry a little bit and I separated the seeds from the goop. Then we spread them out on a pizza pan and made toasted pumpkin seeds. Yum!

Tonight we carve the face, and Incrediboy couldn’t be more jazzed. He told Grandma all about it when I dropped him off this morning, and has informed us he wants to be a pumpkin for Halloween. (Too bad I already got his costume!)

This whole project has been exceptionally delicious to me. Not just because I love introducing new fun traditional things that we can all do together, but because this pumpkin project isn’t just Incrediboy’s first. We never carved pumpkins when I was a kid. I don’t really know why, but I can guess it was a variety of reasons. But the main reason, I figure, was because my folks were never really big on doing anything that would lead to a big mess. Long story short, this is my first jack-o-lantern too.

Hub is a wonderfully fun person. He’s pretty big on holiday traditions loves doing those kinds of things. He’s also fun to be around – very animated and funny and silly. I’m so glad he is a fan of pumpkin carving, or else I’d probably never bother. I didn’t know what I was missing, you know? But now I know. Why we hadn’t done one in the previous 10 Halloweens together I can’t tell you, but it doesn’t matter. I’m glad we didn’t, because it made this one the most special pumpkin in the world. Because best of all, Incrediboy and I got to share a “my-first-time” experience together, which I figure is something that won’t happen too often.

5 comments:

Martie said...

Oh yipee! I'm the first!!!

Wow, how cool is that; sharing a "first" with Incrediboy! I can't believe that you never carved one before.....you missed out on so much fun growing up. But now you know and you can do it every year with Incrediboy!

Nelly said...

We're going to carve tonight or tomorrow! It is so fun! This will be my daughter's first year really contributing to the whole project so we'll see how it goes!

Saur♥Kraut said...

How wonderful. Thanks for the story. It reminds me of SaurKid at that age (and he'd probably have had the same reaction to the carving, too).

It does make me so wish for a family unit, but that isn't to be for us right now.

chesneygirl said...

That's pretty neat, Clew!!!

We're doing ours tonight!

As a kid we carved pumpkins every year. However, my husband is HORRIBLE but holiday traditions...he just assume skip them altogether :(
We've only carved pumpkins together once...the first year we were married.

His idea of carving a pumpking is using his saw. ::rolling eyes::

I'm insisting we (read HE) get better about these fun traditions since the arrival of A. This will be A's first pumpkin carving experience too! :)

Anonymous said...

I have not ever carved a pumpkin either. You know, I have not ever tried toasted pumpkin seeds either! That sounds yummy.