Happy Pumpkin Day, my little Ostracoderm!

As much as the older child is into spooky stuff, the younger is averse to it. He prefers to celebrate the trusty old pumpkins on Halloween.


Papa, the official pumpkin carver, took requests from the 9 year old and the 6 year old: "Stack-o-Lantern" is the 6 year old's and "Melting Witch" is the older one's.

Both the kids drew a bunch of pumpkinhead robots, and pumpkinhead people, colored them in, and gave them as Happy Halloween cards to their friends.

The older child added an extract from a short poem (by Joan Horton from Halloween Hoots and Howls,) to her card. I might have not-so-subtly hinted that she add this poem. It is one of my favorites to read aloud around this time. Another seasonal/topical favorite is By the Light of the Halloween Moon.

I packed mummy-face pizza for lunch, by request, for the kids. We had Black-and-Orange Pasta for dinner: Black rice pasta and pan-seared carrots with a touch of balsamic vinegar and Bragg liquid aminos. Why Black-and-Orange? The answer of course is, Why Not?

The black rice pasta turned a dull purplish grey on cooking, so, I added a touch of black gel color I had leftover from the penguin cakepops project I made a couple of years ago.

Costumes: The six year old zoomed in on Ostracoderm. Since no one knows quite what it looked like, it was something I enjoyed making, based on fossil evidence and artists' impressions on the web.

The older child wanted to be a resourceful, rough-and-tumble, potions-expert witch, fashioned after Bridget Zinn's Kyra (unlike Hermione Jean Granger, who is a superb-intellectual-witch minus the potions).

[Aside: The older child was allowed to buy one book at the school book fair this year. She chose Poison by Zinn; am trying to stay several chapters ahead of her to screen; settling for paraphrasing and skipping parts that seem out of her range at this time and letting her read the rest herself. Zinn, a young and talented Portland resident, succumbed to cancer recently, Poison being her debut novel. I had to buy this book - her life's work.]

The 9 year old made her own little witch's broom from the fallen tree in the backyard. Yep, a huge limb of our tree fell in the recent storm. Luckily not on our roof, and not on the power lines and phone cables. Looks like that's enough firewood for the winter.

The kids' dentist's office has a Candy Buyback! Not that I expect the kids to haul pounds and pounds of candy from their trick-or-treating; they have a small-ish home-made fabric bag which when full is a bit much, and doubles as a clock: if it is about half-full, it's the perfect time for them to head back home.

I was standing at the store a few days ago, trying to read the labels and pick and choose the treats to give away, leaning towards raisin boxes and packaged fruit leathers, when the other half very kindly relieved me of my moral constipation.

"I know what you are thinking... but, let it go. It's OK," he said and took over the task.

So, this year, the neighborhood kids knocking at our door are not going back with organic apples or oranges, or finger puppets or glow sticks or play clay...