The Carving

Last Sunday, despite the fact that it was still two weeks
until Halloween, we decided that it was as good a day as any
to break out the knives and disembowel some pumpkins.
Casey gave Orin a quick demo of the carving step, but because his
knife-wielding skills have yet to be perfected, we assigned Orin
the task of scooping pumpkin guts.
He was offended by being placed on an "easier" job
and only scooped one batch of seeds
before knocking the pumpkin on its side
and pushing it forcibly into the road.
To finalize the display of his disapproval,
he ran away.
It took us some time to convince him to join us again in the yard,
luring him back only by setting up the slide.
Orin loves to slide
and quickly fell into his routine of climbing up,
stomping his feet triumphantly at the top,
carefully positioning himself, sliding down screaming with delight,
and running to the stairs for another go.
But although he was clearly happy,
it still felt wrong to be carving pumpkins
while Orin participated in an activity that had nothing
to do with the Halloween theme.
So we gave him his pumpkin to slide with.
He graciously accepted the pumpkin,
carried it to the top of the slide
threw it down in front of him
and then followed suit.
He then repeated this several dozen times with increasing enthusiasm
while we each carved our pumpkins:
I was disappointed by a lack of toothpicks, which would have allowed
me to carve another Boston Red Sox pumpkin,
and instead produced this lackluster face.
Casey, needing no toothpicks to make a great pumpkin, carved this one
which for some reason reminds me of Super Mario Brothers
and Steven finished up last with this masterpiece.
As for Orin, he slid the afternoon away with his pumpkin,
which, it appears, will remain uncarved.
I am guessing this will be the only year that a pumpkin will be spared.

Stay tuned for baby break-dancing,
coming up as soon as I get motivated to upload the video.