Polaroid Pumpkins

Halloween has arrived in Polaroid-land. Above, the day of pumpkin carving, Mabel cheek to cheek with the jack o'lantern she drew (and the grown-ups carved). Below, crouching with menace in her gargoyle costume – along with a tall friend – on top of the beloved straw mountain at the pumpkin farm. Other festivities, amusements, and a Big Birthday follow.

The postscript below features three of Mabel's small friends who are at present staying at my house. The green alien came several weeks ago and the little dinosaur came last week, while the stick person only arrived this morning. What they all three have in common is that Mabel asked me to make clothing for them. For the stick person I also had to contribute arms and a head. Soon they will be returning to Mabel's house, but until then they pass their time as shown, pretending to be opera singers.  

Monumental Polaroids

My daughter's commitment to making regular Mabel Polaroids has now maintained its steady course without interruption for five years. It has weathered the very disappearance of Polaroid film itself, which still existed when this project started. This present group covered a remarkable clutch of big events pressed into a remarkably short time – which included 1) the End of Preschool, 2) the Fifth Birthday, and 3) the Start of Kindergarten.

Polaroids accumulate, one per week, in a special box on a special shelf at Mabel's house. When six or eight or ten of them are ready, I put them into a special envelope and carry them home with me. Then I scan them and crop them and shove them up on Spencer Alley so that all the wise people who love to look at pictures of Mabel will be able to see them, and also so that my daughter can download the scans. I make high resolution scans in case either one of us wants to make paper prints, but usually we don't do that since we have the paper originals. Which I have to make a special effort to remember to return to the special box on the special shelf at Mabel's house after I have finished scanning them. My daughter uses one Polaroid (but not in any particular order) for the Monday post every week on Pippa's Cabinet, her own highly organized blog, which stands in such stark contrast to the randomness of mine. On Pippa's Cabinet each Polaroid comes with a lively story or two about the enthralling child. There will surely be future manifestations of these same Polaroids – perhaps not even imagined yet – as they become yearly more remote and more treasured and more venerable.

Summer Polaroids

Fresh Polaroids, extending from the 4th of July weekend back through Father's Day, and through Hiding Day, and through Painting Day, all the way back to a happy Mother's Day.

Polaroids

Today was my daughter's first day back after several days away. She took a reunion Polaroid of Mabel. They showed me a new Lego unicorn that was one of the welcome-home treats and surprises opened at breakfast to celebrate.

Weekly Polaroids from other recent eventful weeks below.

Mabel Polaroids

My daughter's weekly Mabel-Polaroids from January through March cover (in only ten weeks) a wide range of the ways life conveys meaning to a four-and-a-half-year-old.

Such as – treats, festivities, milestones, artifacts, friends, adventures, improvisations.

Midwinter Polaroids

Nouveau Polaroids

My daughter's weekly child-rearing Polaroids now and hereafter will be brought into existence using the new clone film which pops out of the camera with variously colored borders rather than traditional white and this is a good thing from a practical viewpoint because in the future it will be easy to tell where the break came in the Polaroid archive of the Life of Mabel who was born AFTER Polaroid film had already gone out of production but whose first few years were documented anyway using dead-stock film until it became unobtainable and chemically degraded but by that time Mabel was already a little child and no longer the baby who populated all those white-bordered pictures.