31 Days of Halloween: Day 13 - Toddler in the Pumpkin Patch

When my third and youngest child Ziggy was a year and a couple months old, I was seriously wracked with guilt. Whereas I had taken his older sisters to all kinds and fashions of pumpkin patches, apple orchards, hay rides and haunted mazes, I had taken him... nowhere. I had no iconic photo of him as a baby in the pumpkin patch, no cute pics of him amongst the corn.

It was killing me.

I went and bought Ziggy a pumpkin outfit (which for the record, I had never done for his sisters despite the other autumn excesses they enjoyed) and invited my mom to join us for the sole reason of documenting our clearly-going-to-be-perfect trip to the pumpkin patch.

So you can imagine how it was a complete and utter surprise - and downer - when it was raining on the day this was all supposed to go down.

"Should I still come?" my mom called to ask in the morning, "Of course!" I screamed. "He's going to the pumpkin patch. Today!"

Off we went, on a miserable day and with a child who it quickly became apparent had a cold, and wanted to be anywhere else but the frickin' pumpkin patch.

I remember all of the actual truth of that day when I look at these photos. But I also believe in this total fiction we managed to capture in film.

And I love these photos as much as I thought I would, and then some.

I'm writing this tonight, with nostalgia, as we prepare to take a family trip to the same pumpkin patch tomorrow. Be back tomorrow with this year's crop of pumpkin photos!

P.S. This is my own little contribution to The Mom Stays in the Picture.