Carving pumpkins

Namine carved her pumpkin for Halloween!

We have just a few short days before Halloween. It’s just in time, then, that she carved the pumpkin she got the last time we visited Zachariah’s Acres.

Namine was pretty indecisive about what she wanted to carve. She considered lions (her favorite animal), vampires, zombies, vampire lions, zombie vampires, and were-creatures. She settled on a vampire with horns.

Namine first sketched out her drawing on a piece of paper, then on the pumpkin. I helped her to cut the top off, and she scooped out its guts. I helped her again when it was time to carve the pumpkin’s face.


You might think it’s a bit helicopter-parent-y (hush, it is too a word) for me to “help” (read: take over) carving her pumpkin, when she really wanted to do it herself. Well, that’s the nice thing about being a parent: it’s my call.

In all fairness, I do try to not be a helicopter parent. I like to give Namine the space she needs to be independent, almost as much as she loves the independence. This is one of those instances where I was not comfortable doing so, mainly due to how difficult it was to carve the pumpkins.

I kid you not, even Jessica and I had difficulty with cutting through our pumpkins. In my mind’s eye, I could clearly see Namine’s hand slipping just the wrong way on the knife (and there’s no right way to slip with a knife).

Namine, to her credit, was understanding and let me carve when it was time to carve. She had a lot of fun — we all did — and she’s happy with how her pumpkin turned out.

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