Our Little Pumpkin

We're starting traditions pretty early in our little family. Santa started his annual visits last year. We can't WAIT for Hadley to have his first big turkey day feast (we already know he'll eat everything that goes before him, so we'll give him a little of everything...I'm strangely excited!). And, for Halloween, we've got a lil' costume planned for his day at the sitter's (his grandma) and a later trip to my parents' for a quick trick-or-treat visit. (We think he's too young to do the regular trick-or-treating thing. We're also up-in-the-air about the fact that, in the future, we'd like for him to experience these traditions and the fun and excitement of trick-or-treating, but wish there was a way to lessen the gluttonous candy-based intent behind the whole thing.) He also wore a giraffe "costume" last year, but being only three months, he just kinda...sat there.

But, we already started the spooky tradition this weekend. Meet Hadley's twin...

Dave watched our lil' monster (not really) while I cut in and scooped out the brrrraaaaains, brrrraaaaaiiiins!! By far the suckiest part of the job. I sketched a not-too-scary face that looked just enough like Hadman - he's got two teeth that are fully in flanked by two teeth that are partially grown.

I used a safety pumpkin cutter thingamabob and started hacking away before Dave started hovering. He finally asked if he could help -- I didn't realize he was interested, yay!

We strapped Hadley into his Space Saver chair and gave him a quickly-drawn pumpkin to "color" (he poked it with the orange before we realized he was more interested in trying to eat the crayon than color...ya win some, ya lose some), but he also intently watched the creation of his jack-o'-lantern. That's when I snapped these pics.

I put a real candle in to see what type of glow we'd created...not too shabby. (We've gotta track down our LED mini-candle to put it outside.) Oh, and Jasper stood watch...

And, now, the scary part -- putting it outside on our stoop. I'm a tad terrified that it'll get stolen and smashed. Yeah, we have hooligans in our area. It's never happened to our small pumpkins in the past, but this one may be too cute for those brats to resist. *fingers crossed* It's lasted a couple of nights so far.

Oh, and for the record, I wasted the seeds. We already had some on-hand (purchased, wop wop) and I was pretty tired from toddler-wrangling to go through the process of sifting through the brains/guts. I'll roast 'em in the future (and undoubtedly post a recipe, hee hee), when the monkey can actually eat some.

We also made some popcorn and drank some cider after the baby went down for the night, while watching an awesome Halloween documentary. That's another tradition for Mama and Papa that we do before almost every major holiday -- watch a documentary on its meaning. Dave has tracked down several very high-quality ones, for Halloween, Christmas and Thanksgiving. We're geeks and we know it. :-)

What about you? Kids or not, do you cut into some pumpkins? Or roast some seeds? Cider? Popcorn? Caaaandy? Do tell!