pumpkin among pumpkins

the munch has a lot of nicknames, pumpkin being one of them. you should have seen the look on her face when it dawned on her that a pumpkin is actually a round orange object. it's the same look of bewilderment-turns-into-awe when i point out a "mama" in a book, and she looks at me like "wait a minute here, whaaaa?" it blows her mind whenever she realizes a word is multi-faceted. ask "where's the bird?" in her room, and she'll point at the bird decal over her door, and then ask "where's the other bird?" and she'll delightedly point at the bird decal over her crib. what really blew my mind the other day was when i asked her "where's the lion?" while she was playing in her playcenter, expecting her to point to the big stuffed lion-on-a-stick, and instead she pointed at this tiny sticker of an actual non-animated lion, and then, when prompted with "where's the other lion?" pointed at the toy lion. she can point at the real moon outside or an animated moon in her books. or a real bird in the sky. and now she knows that she's pumpkin, but so are the five pumpkins in her current favorite book, and so are the sad two trader joe's pumpkins on our porch.

that's right. we went to the pumpkin patch - the real pumpkin patch (as opposed to the haystack-in-a-parking-lot variety - don't worry, i'll teach violet the difference) - and didn't come home with any pumpkins. it was an awesome day, but it just flew by. by the end, violet was starting to fade (read: grumpity grump grump), and it seemed like too much effort to select, pay for and load pumpkins into the car a half mile away by wheelbarrow. i tried to make up for it in the trader joe's bin, but we're going to have to hit up one of the overpriced pumpkin parking lots if we want anything that's going to do justice to the sesame street carving kit that kevin bought (yesssss).

the fall harvest festival had it all - mining for gold, goats walking along wooden high beams, pig races, penelope the 600-lb pig (she didn't race, in case you were wondering), pony rides, ostriches, chicken coops, pumpkin pie/cookies/bread, a corn maze, a tractor parade, and many other things that we didn't get to see. sadly we missed the pig races because we were so focused on the pumpkin-among-pumpkins photo op, but there's always next year.







we were lucky enough to meet up with lisa and john despite dueling nap schedules. trying to get babies to nap compatibly is like trying to get them to smile at the camera together. or to look at the camera together. or to look at the camera at all.







violet was elated when she realized that nana and auntie courtney had driven all the way from san diego for the outing.



almost as elated as i was by the produce at the farm. four varieties of cauliflower, people! ("take a picture," you all mocked. well booyah!)



and because i left the non-smartphone photography duties to my sister yet again, and she has other things to do than keep up our blog, here's a group shot stolen from jack's blog (thanks, lis).



to think, a mere two years ago these four parents were sleeping off hangovers on saturday morning and couldn't have defined meconium to save their lives. who knew how good they'd look posing on a giant haystack pyramid?