Your First Thanksgiving

As I mentioned last year, Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays, if not my favorite. It's all about spending time with family, EATING; there's no pressure to buy presents or do anything fancy. Plus, I have lots of wonderful memories of Thanksgiving with my grandfather when I was a little girl. The best part of your first Thanksgiving was that we got to spend four whole days with you! This was the most time we'd had together since I was on maternity leave, and I loved every minute of it.

Auntie Amanda got in Wednesday after a very delayed flight (per usual). We took her and Daideo to The General Muir for dinner, and you were pretty excited to ruin your outfit with some sweet potatoes. You even got to try some of Daddy's hamburger, so you were pretty happy about that.

Thursday, we got up pretty early and got to work so that Mommy and Auntie Amanda could start drinking cooking. Daddy kept you entertained while I cooked.

This is what our menu looked like on your first Thanksgiving:

• Sweet Potato Biscuits
• Roasted Turkey with Herb Butter
• Potato Leek "Pie"
• Roasted Vegetables (which we lovingly nicknamed "fart casserole")
• Amanda's Green Beans
• Mashed Potatoes
• Mashed Sweet Potatoes
• Chocolate Pie
• Apple Pie

We had a little issue with the turkey. Even though we followed the recipe, the thermometer said it was waaay underdone. AND it was really pink. This got us worried, so we kept it in the oven for way too long and it totally dried out. The thermometer still read underdone (even though Daideo tried to recalibrate it), so we just decided that it was a very vascular turkey (hence the rubor) and threw a bunch of gravy on it to make up for the dryness. Not my best work, but otherwise the food was pretty spectacular.

One of the best parts about our Thanksgiving menu was that I got to use my ice cream maker to make real vanilla ice cream from scratch. This meant that you got to try ice cream for the first time! Check out Auntie Sara's reaction to your face:

On Friday, we went to pick out your first Christmas tree. You were pretty adorable about it.

Later that day, your Grampa and Ms. Holly arrived to spend the rest of the weekend with us. The last time they saw you, you were just a few days old, so they were pretty excited to see you. They even brought you some early birthday and Christmas presents!

You got a lot of fun family time in that weekend...

...and you got in lots of snuggles, too!

Thanksgiving is also an important time because it's Hate Week: the week where Mommy and Auntie Amanda's team plays FSU. This game was especially important this year, but unfortunately we blew it.

At least we looked cute while watching the game!

A Thanksgiving Feast!

Nothing says Thanksgiving quite like hospital food!

Those are words uttered by no one.  Ever.  Well, except for just now where I said it sarcastically, but you get the idea.

You see, your daycare wanted to have parents and children come by one day for lunch just before we all headed off to celebrate Thanksgiving with our families.  Unfortunately, mom wasn’t able to be there because she was saving the world one brain at a time; so that just meant that you and I got to have some daddy-daughter time!

I was actually one of the first parents to get there, and I really wasn’t sure what to do with my hands.  So I scooped you up and walked around the building to check out all of the fun artwork and projects that had been made by your classmates.  It was a fun way to kill some time until all of the other (less awesomely punctual) parents arrived.

By the time most of the other folks had arrived, the food was all set out on long tables, and there were a dozen or so kid-size tables for all of us to sit and enjoy our meal from the surrounding kid-size chairs.  My butt would thank me later.

This was probably the first time I can recall thinking how much easier things would be when you could walk.  Of course, since you could not, I had to carry you in one arm and serve our food with the other.  Doing things one-handed wasn’t exactly a new thing for me; I had been doing it since the day you were born.  That being said, you were about twenty pounds at this point, and it can get a little exhausting carrying around a sack of potatoes that heavy for so long.

Let’s talk about the food.  As I mentioned earlier, it was essentially a bunch of hospital food with a fall festival/Thanksgiving flare.  Honestly, while it wasn’t anything I would write home about, it wasn’t that bad.  There was sweet potato casserole, turkey, rice, bread, stuffing, green beans, and some mashed potatoes.  All the usual Thanksgiving fixin’s.

The kids from the older classes were primarily the ones that participated in the whole thing.  Looking back, I’m pretty sure you were the only kid from your class (or any of the younger classes) that participated.  All of the other kids were running around, throwing the vegetables their parents were giving them, asking for cupcakes and cookies, and saying hilariously inane things that made no sense whatsoever.

We sat at a table with a group of moms that were all Wellstar employees, and apparently all knew each other.  One was an x-ray tech, and the other was a nurse practitioner.  Each of them had two kids, and one was pregnant with a third.  We had some polite conversation, but they mostly kept to themselves and talked about work and other people that they knew.

You and I mostly sat there and shoved food into our faces and laughed at some of the dumb things the other parents and kids were doing.  By the time you can read this, you will probably have realized that this is possibly your dad’s favorite way to spend his time.  We only talked in Spanish so that they wouldn’t understand (which is something you’ll learn to do as you get a little older).  It’s very useful, so keep that in your back pocket for those times that you need it.

After eating, we cleaned up our plates (very important) and meandered around seeing if there was anybody we recognized.  At one point, we ran into Ms. Sam, who was your teacher in your previous classroom!  She’s probably your favorite, so you were quite happy to see her and give her a hug.

Once we caught up with everyone and finished with our lunch, it was time for both of us to get back to our very important jobs.  I would go back to the office and do super important lawyer things.  You would go back to the classroom and make sure to track down every single dog that was hiding in that room.

I dropped you off with Ms. Jean, even though you apparently wanted to just come home with me.  You cried as soon as I handed you off, which is always heartbreaking, but I understand how you felt.  I never like leaving you either.

Either way, we both had a bunch of fun hanging out and grabbing a bite of some Thanksgiving hospital food.  I’ll always remember our little Thanksgiving date.