Daddy Days: Musts for fall parenting
Now that it’s officially fall, y’all (according to the autumnal solstice not the thermometer), it’s time to take a closer look at parental life during this much ballyhooed season.
A cursory overview of past fall magazine articles, social media posts and TV commercials informs one that fall is all about parents checking specific boxes off their family’s life experience chart.
Here are some examples of things it appears you HAVE to do as a parent now that it’s fall.
Take pictures in a pumpkin patch. There is nothing cuter than a picture of a baby or toddler amongst a pile of orange gourds in a backdrop of hay bales. It’s a throwback to simpler times when harvesting farmers hand-gathered a stack of pumpkins and dragged a haystack into the yard so their family could pose for pictures in plaid shirts for posting on social media. You know, just like Pa did in "Little House on the Prairie."
I’ve never seen a picture like this from pre-cell phone times but as a parent you (apparently) must keep this timeless tradition going.
Make homemade fall-shaped cookies. The big home baking supply conglomerates have a lock on every single season of the year. From hearts on Valentine's, to leaves and pumpkin shapes in the fall, there is a cookie mold to shape the exact same sugar cookie into an indispensable part of each season. I like cookies so I’m not complaining. I just want to go on the record saying I totally see what’s going on here.
Make homemade candied apples. I don’t complain about the cookies but the candied apple thing is a different story. Can any child actually eat these? They’re like the S’mores of indoor baking. Which is to say, they’re the messiest, most unnecessarily sticky yet ubiquitous confectionary ever.
Up your intake of pumpkin spice by 2,000%. It all started 20 years ago with those pumpkin spice lattes and I think we can collectively agree it has gone too far. Pumpkin spice ice cream? Pumpkin spice cereal?? Pumpkin spice pizza?!?! I think it’s time for someone to tell pumpkin spice to get back in its lane. It’s a seasoning for Thanksgiving pies. And a little goes a long way. Did you know there isn’t even any pumpkin in it?
Decorate your lawn with oversize Halloween creatures. The big box stores appear to be in an arms race to see who can sell the tallest werewolf or skeleton lawn decoration, and they want YOU to participate. I don’t get this on multiple levels. I miss the Jack O'Lantern days of yore (you know, like 1997) when pumpkins were the yard decor of fall instead of the grotesque stuff of nightmares you see popping up everywhere today.
Get really excited about fall colors. OK, I’ve been pretty hard on fall activities, but I can get behind the appreciation of fall foliage. Especially since where we live autumnal shows of arboreal color only appear for approximately 8 hours one day in November. However, seeing that many trees around here put on their rusty brown colors in August (for Texas’ fifth season, drought) I don’t think there will be much cause for comparing Central Texas’ fall colors to Vermont’s. Which, let’s be honest, there never is.
Harris and his wife live in Pflugerville with their seven children. Please email comments or suggestions for future columns to thoughtsforcaleb@gmail.com.
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Daddy Days: Musts for fall parenting
