Liam and the Pumpkin

Last Sunday, October 19, would have been my father’s 92nd birthday. It was the first thing I thought of that morning. My second thought had to do with a big pumpkin.

Our niece and her brand new baby, Liam, had come to Georgia for a short visit with hopes of recreating one of those picture-perfect autumn baby photos you see all over social media. You know the ones, where cherub-faced infants sit contentedly in hollowed-out pumpkins like they’re posing for a Hallmark greeting card.

Our niece had texted me in advance, asking me to find the largest pumpkin I could get my hands on, and I found a real whopper at Kroger. This thing was mammoth—the kind of pumpkin that makes you wonder if it once had ambitions of becoming a Guinness World Record veggie. But before I tell you about last Sunday’s escapade, I need to back up a couple of weeks.

You see, this wasn’t our niece’s first attempt at pumpkin photography. Days earlier, inspired by cute Instagram-perfect images she had seen, she herself had hollowed out a pumpkin—a much smaller pumpkin— in her own backyard, plopped her baby inside, and waited for the magic to happen. But Liam transformed into a scream machine. No dreamy, fairytale photos were taken that day—just images of a red-faced baby voicing his extreme displeasure about being placed in a gourd.

That’s when our niece discovered something very important to pumpkin photography sessions: Extracting a baby from a pumpkin requires a second person. One person needs to hold the pumpkin securely while the other shimmies out the infant. She learned this the hard way when little Liam wouldn’t slip-slide out of that big orange squash. Realizing her baby was stuck, our niece did what any responsible parent would do. She picked up the entire pumpkin, baby and all, and rushed next door to get help (the neighbor’s doorbell camera caught the whole thing on video, by the way). He wasn’t home. Neither were any of her other nearby neighbors.

There she was, power walking house to house with a baby-filled pumpkin in her arms. Thankfully, Liam had stopped crying at some point and started enjoying his pumpkin ride around the neighborhood in Mommy’s arms. Meanwhile, our niece was becoming more and more frantic. How had she not thought this through? This was supposed to be a lovely reminder of Liam’s first autumn, and instead, it was becoming the story of how she got her baby stuck in a pumpkin.

Finally, a neighbor came to the continued from page

door and helped unwedge little Liam—crisis averted in less than a minute.

So back to last Sunday— my father’s birthday. Our niece wanted to try it again and get that perfect pumpkin pic. She was determined to get it right. My husband helped her hollow out the giant pumpkin and cut two little leg holes near the base. When Liam woke from his nap, our niece gently removed his Baby Shark pajamas and changed his diaper, all the while cooing “Good morning! Good morning!” to her sleepy baby boy.

We all stepped outside onto the porch, and in one smooth motion, she plunged him into the pumpkin—this one so enormous it practically swallowed him whole. He looked up at us with a most bewildered expression before the waterworks started. That’s when our niece and I began dancing around like lunatics in front of him. Our interpretive dance was so bizarre that Liam became distracted and stopped crying for just a few moments, staring at us like we’d lost our minds while submerged in orange pumpkin flesh. We quickly snapped a dozen photos. Are they Instagram- worthy? Absolutely not. But they’re ours, and they’re freakishly perfect.

And afterward, I held the pumpkin while our niece slid him right out. No panicked neighborhood tour required.

Those photos might not be what our niece had envisioned, but they’re something better—they’re a Goldilocks story we’ll tell Liam for the rest of his life. “One time when you were four months old, your mama put you in a pumpkin. The first pumpkin was too small, and you got stuck. The second pumpkin was too big and swallowed you whole. We didn’t try a third pumpkin, but if we had, I’m sure it would have been just right.”

It was, and is, the stuff of fun family folklore, and I’m sure my father— watching from somewhere beyond this world—got a kick out of the spectacle. Some people carve spooky faces on pumpkins and place glowing candles inside. Not us. We put babies inside our pumpkins. Happy Halloween!

Stuck Liam — Pumpkin is too small.

Liam — Pumpkin is too huge.