Earlier this week we took the Boy to his first "pumpkin patch." There were a few rides like at a midway at a carnival, but of course a four-month-old can't do anything like that. A mostly empty corner on the outskirts of town is taken over by the seasonal carny-folk and a pumpkin patch market is born. There are gourds of all kinds on the offer, and of all sizes. Even some games-of-chance and aforementioned rides.
But mostly, if you have young children and live in Long Beach, you bring them to this place for some "authentic autumn-ing", to choose some pumpkins, and to take these kinds of pictures:
I guess the odor of hay is supposed to make it easy to pretend you don't live in the city.
After not too long, the photos get here, right before the manifestation of "losing his shit" occurs:
A few days later, on the weekend, we decided to go do white people stuff: we would drive off into the mountains and go "appling"---pick apples at an orchard. Since our destination, Riley Farms, also had pumpkins, we could check out a real pumpkin patch.
We didn't leave when we really wanted to, so the last forty minutes of the trip was the mile-and-a-half stretch of Oak Hills Rd outside of Yukaipa leading to the place. I spent the entire time in first gear.
Like the city pumpkin patch in Long Beach, apparently, the thing to do with young children is to take them to one. But here it was the real deal, and there were thousands of mostly affluent, mostly white families swarming the place.
It also looked like the place to go to court your sweetie if neither of you drink.
Anyway, we took a hay ride to the top-side glen---the pippin apple section. Down below was the sweeter offers, the "Rome beauties". We stuck to the more tart favorite of Washington, the hearty pippin:
From our perch up at the pippins, we could see the pumpkins off in the distance. We finished filling out paper bag for the u-pick, paid our nearly twenty-five bucks (!!!) for the pleasure, and headed down:
We picked two pumpkins, took the Boy to meet the sheep at the petting zoo (where Corrie got sneezed on in rather gross fashion by a sheep), were told the wait for a two-top at the 18th century diner would be two and a half hours (when told this I smiled and said, "Well, good for you guys."), and hung out in the shade of a tree to change a diaper and rest. Throughout nearly every one of those activities, Cass was either asleep, staring at his fist, or chewing on his fist.
Kids...am I right?
This was our first non-family/funeral outing, where Corrie wore the Boy all day and I carried everything else: the diaper bag, the bag of apples, the bag with our two pumpkins, and the expensive camera I bought Corrie a few years ago.
What is fatherhood? Being leaden down with a ton of shit and constantly bending over to pick up the HST hat that kept falling into the dust. I kid, of course, but only a little.
I also wouldn't change any of it.
My two favorite people:
at least you didn't loose him in a maze..... and by the way... don't EVER let me take Cassius into a maze.... I've lost every child I've ever entered into a maze with.... I'm a terrible mother/grandmother..... directionally challenged even in mazes....
ReplyDelete