moominmolly | (no subject)

N: "Mommy's pumpkin has a YEEF on it!"

A moment later: "Natalie eat a yeef?" I let her munch on the lid a little, and it turns out the girl likes the taste of raw pumpkin. Further, it turns out that raw pumpkin really isn't as bad as you might expect.

Waking up from a nap, today, she was crying a bit more than I'd have expected her to. When I picked her up, she wailed, "MOMMY'S BAG!"

"My bag?"
"Yes."
"...did you have a dream?"
"Yeah."
"What was it about?"
"Rory eating a bag! NOT food bag. ...Probably upstairs."

I reassured her that it was just a dream, that Rory hadn't really eaten my bag. When we went upstairs and Rory was there, she looked at him and repeated, "probably upstairs!" as if delighted to see her dream realized, except for that traumatic bag-eating part.

Also! She's now able to tell me what she's thinking about. If she looks all thoughtful, I can ask her, "Natalie, what are you thinking about?" and she HAS AN ANSWER. Earlier today, D and I were in the kitchen, and Natalie ran and excitedly told us "NATALIE THINKING ABOUT [PAPER TOWELS]!" (except I can't remember what totally mundane thing she reported). I'm really enjoying this era of her being able to answer open-ended questions. Though, sometimes, it's still hard for her to use a word other than "that! *POINT*" to describe something she can see.

Finally, she's starting in with some overregularization ("drawed" from "drew", "shoeses", etc) which I am afraid I find painfully cute. SO CUTE! Cute.

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Shoeses!

I am totally anxiously awaiting "feets".

Yes yes, your daughter continues to be adorable. (Have I mentioned how much I enjoy your photo journals about her?)
But more importantly (at this precise moment at time, with my back patio covered with pumpkin guts and a remarkably creepy face staring in the window at me), what an absolutely gorgeous pumpkin!

:) Thank you! I'd never tried that pumpkin-shading thing before. It's pretty fun! The leaf was

anotherjen's idea, and I'm really happy with it.

how did you do that?

Well,

anotherjen gave me the idea of tracing a leaf, and her dad had woodworking tools which made planing off a layer of pumpkin rind pretty easy. It definitely helped that I had sliced the outline with a sharp knife, which made my outlines clean.

I've seen this technique before but haven't tried it. How much of the outer pumpkin rind to you have to peel away to get the effect?

Hmm. The rind on this pumpkin was maybe, say, an inch thick? And I took off about a quarter of an inch for the bulk of the leaf. The big veins are cut all the way through, and the smaller ones are sliced through about 3/4 of the way. I could have taken away a lot more and had a brighter leaf, that's for sure, but I was cautious about it breaking from all the veins I wanted to put in, and this definitely seemed to be enough.

Also, and this is a little gross, I put baby oil on the cut surface to keep it from getting brown.

That's a pretty fantastic leaf! Great job!

High pumpkin praise, from you!

Wow. Nice yeef. Did you actually carve that freehand?

Thank you! And, naw, I traced it, and I even copied the original leaf's veins.

That is one of the most beautiful pumpkin carvings I have ever seen. And how autumnal it is!

Thank you! Halloween is basically the best holiday, because it is both childish and beautiful.

that's a fantastic summary of it :)

And, oh, personally significant.

Well, there's that too. :)

Your pumpkin is totally kick-ass.

Thanks! Now I find myself wanting to go carve some more. :)

Clearly, you should!

I saw a pretty fantastic one of a tree last night, too. Next to it was a pumpkin that no one could figure out what the carving was. It turned out to be a vampire biting a woman's neck, which was totally awesome once it was pointed out to me what it was, but definitely not as awesome as the tree (or your leaf!) since it needed the pointing out.

I have three pumpkins left..... Wouldn't mind a carving buddy...

It looks AMAZING.

Thank you! And thank you for the idea. :)

If there were any way for me to swing that in the next two days, I would absolutely take you up on it, since it turns out that carving pumpkins is pretty fun!

Kids just rock, don't they?

Seriously! I am way more into this upcoming era of her being a sentient little person with opinions and ideas and stuff. I mean, the baby thing was cute and all, but I'm happy that now we can have conversations, even if they're pretty simple ones.

Seriously!

I liked having a baby around the house, but I have really really liked having such an interesting small person around to have fascinating conversations with.

pretty pumpkin! now I want to come up with some tool to do that shaving off layers of the pumpkin thing - we have 2 hollowed out pumpkins awaiting carving with

gljiva.

I wound up carving a spooky face on the BACK of the pumpkin for ventilation, since it turns out that a little chimney on the top (and leaf-veins cut all the way through) wasn't enough to feed the poor little candle!

I think it could be done with care with a paring knife, but it's true that the little shaver thingy I was using made it really simple.

The cute of new (incorrect) syntax rules!

And the awesome pumpkin. Wow.

Yes! It so does!

And thank you. :)

"probably upstairs!" *dies of cute*

It was perfectly enunciated, too, just like "thank you, but no". This made it cuter.

Wow, that is really gorgeous.

Thank you very much. :)