Thanksgiving: The One Where I Lose It

It got worse. P spent Wednesday afternoon making the mashed potatoes. Wednesday night, we put Harry to bed in the car and drove to my brother's house and transferred Harry to the pack and play. The three of us then each took a item and prepped the beans, which I then cooked. Thursday, we headed to my dad's. My stepfamily showed up in the early afternoon, and my stepbrothers immediately planted themselves in front of the TV, where they proceeded to spend the entire day.

While P attempted (unsuccessfully) to get Harry to take a nap, I began working on stuffing and sweet potato casserole. My brother helped by washing things when I finished working with them. The stepbrothers would occasionally wander in to get a new beer but never offered to help. It was a long day in the kitchen. The only contribution either of them made was that my dad explicitly asked one of them to stir the gravy, which he did, but he didn't look happy about it. They did manage to contribute very large appetites, eating an enormous amount of food. Possibly because they were rather stoned.

The following morning, my dad asked if anyone was particularly committed to having turkey leftovers. We said we'd take some if it wasn't a hassle but we weren't especially committed. It turned out that he was hoping to re-roast the half of the bird that was not yet carved some night when my brother was over for dinner. His wife stated that she and her boys wanted leftovers. Seriously? You contribute essentially nothing and you insist on leftovers?

They also insisted on pie. My dad divided up what remained of the pie, putting some in a box for him, some in a box for the boys and some in a box for us. When we were getting ready to leave, I asked my dad for our pie. He pointed to an empty spot on the counter, then realized that the boys had taken not only their pie but also ours.

Fuck that. Really? You contribute nothing, you insist on having leftover turkey even though it's inconvenient for the person who prepared it, and then you steal the leftover pie of the people who made 90% of the food? FUCK YOU!! Yeah, I was and am pissed. I called my stepmother to tell her to stop wherever they were and surrender the pie (they had only left ten minutes earlier), but her phone was off. One stepbrother seems to be surgically attached to his iPhone, so I emailed him, but he didn't respond. So we got no pie. And I decided that I will never again have Thanksgiving with them unless there is an arrangement made in advance regarding what each person will be contributing -- one which prohibits freeloaders -- and some sort of lockbox for my damn leftovers.

Thanksgiving: The one where Harry likes cranberry

My stepmother's contribution to Thanksgiving was a cranberry dish involving cranberries, orange, and who knows what else. When she suggested that would be her contribution, I had to laugh a little, since I know that my dad, my brother, P and I do not eat generally cranberry concoction at Thanksgiving. So the only contribution she and her boys would be making was something that only they would eat.

When we sat down to eat, the cranberry was in front of Harry. He immediately started pointing at it. He ate his mixed veggies and some mashed potatoes and some stuffing and some sweet potato casserole. He rejected his turkey, as expected. But throughout, he kept pointing at the cranberry. My stepmother kept telling him he wouldn't like it, that it was tart. But he kept pointing.

Finally, we gave in. We put a few bites on his tray and let him try it. He made a face, one that clearly noted the tartness. And then he grabbed another handful. And another. He made that face each time, but he kept on eating, like it was the best food he'd ever tasted. We kept scooping more onto the tray, and he kept eating it. Apparently, Harry likes tart things, including cranberry.

Needlesstosay, we ended up with half of the leftover cranberry.

Thanksgiving: The One Where We Do All The Work

In the almost ten years we've been together, P and I have spent Thanksgiving with his family. Until last year, my dad and brother joined us. His mom is a good cook and does a good job of assigning people things to bring so that she doesn't get overwhelmed. And the added bonus is that his mom's house is only ten minutes from us. Maybe fifteen. So, aside from last year when we went to his aunt's vacation house three and a half hours away, we spent Thanksgiving at his mom's. But my dad got remarried last year, increasing the size of my family and making it difficult/impossible to join the families together. It started to feel like we were supposed to trade off, so we agreed to head to my dad's this year.

So we're heading to RI. But my dad doesn't usually host Thanksgiving, or hasn't in a long while. Which means he doesn't really know how to do this. He is a firm adherent to the philosophy that holidays are about family/people rather than food or presents and therefore thinks effort should be minimized with respect to the latter two categories. Consequently, he is providing turkey, baked potatoes, peas, and a pie, and anyone who wants anything else is responsible for bringing it. Which means that P and I are responsible for mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole, green beans, stuffing, and a second pie. Because my dad's wife and her (adult) sons are incapable of contributing anything. This pisses me off to no end. Thankfully my brother is going to help us prep when he can (keeping in mind that he has to work Thanksgiving morning, so I'm genuinely thankful that he's going to help at all).

I sent an email listing the menu (basically, what my dad would provide) and asking what people were bringing. My dad's wife offered to bring cranberry. No one else said a single fucking word, until one of her boys said he hoped the second pie would be pumpkin or pecan, but didn't offer to, say, bring it himself. Leaving the rest to me and P -- you know, the pregnant woman and her husband and their toddler. And my brother, who actually has work to do that day. Ugh. Not that I'm bitter or anything ;) With P's mom, everyone gets assigned one or two things, and we only have to drive 10 minutes. So, yeah, next year, we're back to going there. And we may not do the alternation thing. Because let's be real -- Thanksgiving is kind of about the food. But if I'm going to have to make it all, I'm not going to travel with my bags of food.

Edited to add: Later this afternoon, my dad sent an email asking what people wanted for beer. He noted that he has Michelob and Coors Light. My goddamn stepbrother wrote back to say he'd like Sierra Nevada or Heineken. Really, you self-centered son of a bitch? I got pissed. P decided to respond to the email, suggesting that perhaps anyone who wasn't okay with Coors Light or Michelob could bring their own to save my dad from having to go buy a bunch of six-packs for anyone who wanted something different. What is wrong with these people?

Halloween: Franken-Monkey

Harry was supposed to be Bam-Bam for Halloween. But we live in New England, and I was worried that it would be too cold to have him out in a cloth diaper and little else in late October. So we decided that he would be a monkey, wearing a generic costume we found at BRU. Of course, it ended up being unseasonably warm, and he was sweating in his monkey suit.

Regardless, my dad and stepmother and Ps mom and her husband came over that evening to see him all dressed up and stayed at our house distributing candy while we took Harry around the neighborhood. We figured he didn't need to collect any candy, but we loaded him up in his wagon along with a tiny pail that could fit 6 or so candies in it and brought him around the neighborhood anyway, mainly just to wish folks a Happy Halloween. Despite the fact that it was Saturday and the weather was warm, there were very few kids out, so a lot of people insisted we take candy even if Harry wasn't going to eat it. And some of the other kids in the neighborhood thought it would be cute to share their candy with him, so kids put candy in the wagon with him. Despite our efforts, I think we ended the evening with more candy in our house than we started with.

On an unrelated note, as you can see from the photo, Harry has gotten pretty stable on his feet. But he still does the Franken-walk for stability. He'll grow out of that, right?

Merry Merry

Merry Christmas, everyone! What follows is a not-so-brief recounting of our Christmas so far, parts 1 through 3 (of 5) of Harry's first Christmas.

This year, we decided not to do the whole eight-houses-in-four-days thing. It seemed a bit much to ask of an infant. Sadly, though, my grandfather is too old/frail to travel, so we weren't able to eliminate much driving but were able to spread it out a bit more. So we will do five houses in seven days (four down), which seemed a slight bit more reasonable in the planning, though weather resulted in very poor driving conditions thus far, turning what should have been 8-8.5 hours of driving into 14 hours or pure suckage.

Saturday, we headed to my grandfather's house for Christmas part 1. What is normally a two hour and forty-five minute trip took four hours because of the snow. Harry miraculously slept the whole drive. We cursed the situation anyway, and then felt like we should have been thankful as it took us six hours to get home on Sunday. Seriously, snow? I hate you. We debated stopping forty-five miles from home and getting a hotel room, as it was starting to get ridiculous on the roads. Instead, we stopped when we were 15 miles from home, as the baby was awake and we both had to use the bathroom. I changed and fed Harry at the rest stop and then somehow the roads had cleared up enough that we got home in 25 minutes. It was our Christmas miracle.

It was pretty awesome to see my grandfather with Harry. Papa was often a pretty awesome grandfather -- he read us stories from books and made others up for us, elaborate tales of a mouse called Squeaky. He was an expert hand-washer -- so good that we looked forward to getting scrubbed up by him before meals. And his love for my grandmother, who died twenty-six years ago, has always stood as a example to me of how amazing and powerful love can be. That said, he was also, on occasion, a bit of a bully. Sadly, as the years have gone on, he has become increasingly unwell health-wise, though he has stayed fairly coherent -- no small feat at 92. And with those years has come a tendency to say exactly what he thinks at any given moment, often very loudly due to his increasing deafness, with little regard to the feelings of others, really exacerbating his bullying tendencies. So I wasn't really sure what to expect from him. It turns out, I needn't have been concerned. He was so excited to get to spend time with his great-grandson. He really doted on him, calling him the little prince and kissing his hands over and over. Whenever Harry was out of sight, my grandfather immedietely asked "Where's the baby now?" And Harry seemed as excited as his Big Papa was, all smiles for him. Christmas number one was exhausting, but I am so glad we made the trip.

Christmas part 2 was our annual "family Christmas", which has expanded over the years to include P, my brother's wife, and my dad's wife. (We hit traffic for this one too, though it was just traffic and not weather.) It was pretty low key. And that was fine with me. But we hit enough traffic on the way home that we only had time to run into the house, change Harry's diaper, change our own clothes, and run back out the door for what seemed like the longest Christmas service ever at church. P went (reluctantly) because I asked him too, and I'm now afraid that he'll never come again, which sucks since Christmas is such a nice service even if you don't think of it as anything more than the celebration of the birth of some baby two millenia ago. I love the music and the candles and the quiet beauty of it. Without it, Christmas feels so rushed and so commercial and so hollow. After Harry went to bed, we had dinner, then put together his main present from us, a jumperoo.

This morning, otherwise known as Christmas part 3, I put out the new stockings I got for us with our names embroidered on them, including one for Buddy (there's actually a great story about Buddy's stocking that I'll save for another day). We opened presents (almost all of which were for Harry -- mostly clothes, some books, and some small toys, much coming from the BabyCenter store clearance sale). Harry most enjoyed the gift bag that I had put a tie for P into. He loved to hold onto the handle and shake it. Ah, the simple things.

As you can see, though, he also loved the jumperoo. He's still a bit small for it -- we put the biggest phone book we have beneath it for him to jump on. But he doesn't know the difference.

So, it's time to make the sweet potato casserole and green beans for Christmas part 4 at Ps mom's house this evening, then home to sleep and get ready for Christmas part 5. My mom is coming here, which means more work but less driving and something that more resembles a routine for Harry.

I hope you and yours have had a good one.

Christmas Eve

Seventeen years ago today, my mom left. She sat us down in the dining room and told us that when we returned from celebrating Christmas with our grandparents, she would be gone and wouldn't be coming back. She meant in the living-in-the-same-house sense, and in that sense she was wrong -- she did come back for a few weeks in the spring, making a half-hearted attempt to work things out.

But in the more meaningful sense she was right. She never really did come back. Without my father, brother and me to keep her in check, she descended deeper into an alcoholic haze, one she seems to be in even when sober now. And there's been a distance in her eyes ever since then. Or maybe it was there before and I just didn't notice it. But I definitely experienced that moment as a turning point, for me for sure, even if not really for her.

And, sadly, this continues to be what I think of when Christmas Eve rolls around. Merry frickin' Christmas, mom.

On a more positive note, tomorrow I will wake up in my own house on Christmas morning for the first time in twenty years. Hooray!

Nablopomo: Happy Halloween

Well, I may end up doing a lot of photo posts, but I'm going to attempt to do Nablopomo again this year, mainly to force myself to post more often.

Happy belated Halloween!


Best buddies:

Eek: 27 Days to Go and Major Life Changes

27 days to go. And that's assuming no early arrival. That said, I was born on my due date, and P was four weeks late, but I have no sense as to whether our mothers' experiences are at all predictive.

I am feeling somewhat better about how much there is to do. Between last week and last night, we made some progress on the list. We sorted stuff last week and put all things requiring washing into the hamper. We also started the laundry last night. I know you're supposed to wash baby things before use -- how many times? We're going with two, but I'm starting to wonder if we should just do one for clothes/blankets and only do more for cloth diapers. We have our Taking Care of Your Newborn class tonight, so maybe we'll find out then. The corner shelves were a pain in the ass for P to install given that our walls aren't square, but they got done last night and look awesome. We'll probably tackle the wall shelves tomorrow. And we ordered a quilt hanger -- thanks Nicki!

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On an unrelated-to-baby note, this weekend, my dad got remarried. It's weird to be 31 and get a whole bunch of new family members. I went from having one brother to four, plus a new sister in law and niece. I'm not sure to what extent I'm supposed to think of them as brothers, etc. -- if I was a kid and we all lived together, then sure, of course they're siblings, but as adults it's different, or at least it feels that way.

And there's also the significant change that it represents to all of our lives. For us (me, my dad, and my brother), getting through my parents' divorce involved the repetition of a lot of traditions and the creation of new ones. It gave us a sense of stability in a time that was seriously lacking in it. I definitely came to rely on that repetition and sense of constancy, probably too much so. It was just the three of us for so long. Now, with each passing year, we seem to add new family (first P and his family, then my SIL and hers, and now my dad's wife and her family), and while each addition is a blessing, it requires a change in "what we've always done." Thus far, the changes we've made have been relatively limited -- my dad and brother/SIL have joined P and I with Ps family for Thanksgiving for 8+ years; P and I cut the time with each of our families short at Christmas in order to fit everyone in, resulting in a lot of time in the car; P and I only do vacation with my famly every other year to allow us some travel time on our own -- but my dad's routine throughout this time has stayed largely the same or accommodated us, so it's only been our routines that have changed.

But it won't stay that way. My dad will be moving further away (from an hour away to three hours away), and, I assume, will be spending at least some holidays with his wife's family. He's very nonconfrontational (and rather passive-aggressive), and I fear that will result in us seeing very little of him, except when it doesn't much matter to her (such as Christmas (she is Jewish), which is the holiday that is the most difficult for P and I as it is, given the number of people that expect to see us and given Ps (and my) reluctance to do all the driving with a baby and my family's unwillingness to accommodate our needs). And I'm not sure where any of it leaves me, other than with feelings of abandonment and terror. For so long, my brother and I accommodated my dad's wishes around holidays because he was sad and lonely and it was what he needed. But now it's what I need and I feel like no one gives a shit. Several years in a row we didn't even see my dad for Father's Day because he made other plans, and it broke my heart, but it felt selfish to say so.

Bottom line: As much as I know I'm gaining a lot of new family, I feel like I'm losing the one I had, and it makes me incredibly sad and afraid at a time when I'm already feeling overwhelmed. I wish I could grab hold of my family and force them to stay close and keep things the way they always were, but I know I can't. I know things change and the world doesn't revolve around me and my needs but sometimes I wish it did.

Ritual

So, 30 weeks seems surreal. And that's pretty much all I have to say about that.

Until I was ten or eleven, our family celebrated the Fourth of July the same way every year. We went to the fireworks in our town, arriving early in the day to stake out a good spot on the lawn. We loaded up the Scotch cooler (so called because it was plaid, not as any indication of its contents) with food and drinks and brought blankets to lounge on that we only used on the Fourth of July (even though they were plaid and wool, rather than All American) and a few chairs for adults. We ate cold fried chicken and watermelon because our family friends who we went with brought both, and my brother and I never had fried chicken except with them. I remember hot air balloons and frisbee games and finally being old enough to be allowed to walk around by ourselves and check out the festivities. Sometimes people came via parachute. And the fireworks always seemed amazing -- well worth the long walk back to the car and the slow crawl to get out of the parking lot.

After my family moved, we no longer had a Fourth of July ritual. We went back to Connecticut a few times, but never back to our old town, since the fireworks were for residents only. There are a lot of Fourths that I don't really remember at all, which makes me a little sad, since my memories of my childhood Fourths are so happy.

This year, I decided to do something vaguely festive. I baked an apple pie.

We brought it (still warm) to our friends' place, where we enjoyed the Boston fireworks from their roofdeck (though without the Pops, as the radio up there didn't get AM, which was too bad). I don't see pie on a roofdeck as a likely candidate for our new ritual, but figure it will likely be the last Fourth we have before we start thinking about starting such a new ritual, so pie on a roofdeck it was. I suspect that once we have kids who are old enough to appreciate it, we'll do the Esplanade in full force, spending the full day by the river, eating fried chicken and watermelon (and pie, perhaps). Maybe with family friends and a cooler with a nickname and special Fourth of July blankets. Though likely without a long walk to the car, since Boston fireworks aren't really car-friendly. And with an F-15 flyover rather than hot air balloons. But a ritual nonetheless.

A parting shot of the pie, which didn't look so pristine for long: