The Naivete of Children

And My 50th Post!

Children are so precious! The way they think is sometimes so pure (o.k. - naive maybe).

Let me start at the beginning...we all know what happens to your pumpkins about 3-4 days after being carved.

Mold.
Pure Penicillin!

And when you're little, you just don't understand that the mold is the reason you have to wait so long to carve them in the first place.

I could never understand why we couldn't have the Jack-o-Lanterns sitting, carved, and lit on our porch for most of the month of October.
They could have graced our porch with their cuteness, or scariness, all month long - but the parents, in all of their wisdom, always made us wait.

Now remember, my children haven't had many jack-o-lanterns in their lives. The few we have made since we've been on the farm have always been taken to Mom's. So the children have never seen the demise of the pumpkins.

And of course, you can't get rid of the pumpkins until the children understand that it's time. They would panic at the "dumpstering" of perfectly good pumpkins if there were no clear reason why to get rid of them.

Well........it's time.
I noticed the growing patches of mold as I entered the house in the afternoon. Julia noticed them sometime a bit later. Her cute self came in, in that Julia, stoic, all business and no play kind of way and says something along these lines.....

"Mom. There is like a squirrel's tail, or something furry, on my pumpkin."

How do you not laugh at this?

You don't want to bruise any egos - you know she's not aware that this big, hairy patch is just medicine in the making - she's never seen a moldy pumpkin before.

Anyway, in all fairness to her - it really does kind of look soft and fluffy like a squirrel's tail. I actually had to do a double take the first time I saw it. You know, maybe Willis has been playing tricks with these pumkins too - maybe some spanish moss draped around the "hat". Maybe a squirrel's tail...

And as Julia noted, it's even in his eyes.

Legare's is growing some too, but not with the gusto of Julia's.So, here's to the naivete of children!

And here's to me, having my 50th post!