Peter, Peter Pumpkin Eater

“Peter, Peter Pumpkin Eater had a wife and couldn’t keep her. Put her in a pumpkin shell, and there he kept her very well.” The idea for these pictures originated with Clara Grace’s Nana who was visiting from Michigan. While she and Clara Grace’s Daddy were grocery shopping during the second week of her granddaughter’s life, she surveyed all the sad pumpkins not yet selected to be some child’s Halloween jack-o’-lantern. “I’ll buy one for you,” she told Clara Grace’s Daddy, “and you can carve it out and take a picture of her peaking out from the top.”

He was skeptical about the whole idea but he helped out, even so far as to swipe the perfect pumpkin from the caramel apple display on isle twelve and replace it with one of the slightly misshapen pumpkins they’d rejected from those on sale. Since Clara Grace’s parents were soon caught up in the tornado of dirty diapers, sponge baths, and midnight feedings, That might have been the end of that. The day before Thanksgiving however, Clara Grace’s Mommy decided that the soon to be rotten pumpkin should either be thrown away or put to good use. So, while Clara Grace’s Daddy scraped it out, her Mommy dressed her in a fall outfit and pumpkin hat she’d knit together while higher and much more talented powers were knitting Clara Grace together in her womb. Then, quite unceremoniously, Clara Grace’s parents stuffed her into the large vegetable and asked her to “smile.”

Here may have occurred their first monumental parenting goof. Fortunately, there were no physical ill effects, although they are still waiting to see the psychological ramifications. The pumpkin, being a round object, with added wiggling from Clara Grace, naturally began to topple. Fortunately, Clara Grace’s Mommy caught it before it spilled its occupant to the grass. Did this traumatic setback put a stop to picture taking? Of course not. Clara Grace’s Daddy placed a wedge-shaped log behind the pumpkin and after this improvement everything went very well. Clara Grace really got into this photo shoot, smelling, feeling, and even licking her new surroundings. Her parents are confident she will be a big pumpkin eater just like themselves.