First Thanksgiving

The nice thing about being a bi-national family is that we get to celebrate Thanksgiving twice. Although the origins of this holiday are a bit different in Canada and the U.S., the general idea is the same: family and food. Mandy would insist, however, that some of the differences matter. First of all, in Canada we get to choose the day when the big meal takes place: Saturday, Sunday or Monday are all considered acceptable. Not so down in the land of the Pilgrims' pride; in fact, Mandy finds the very of such choice baffling. As well, up in the North we don't have any particular connection between this holiday and insane pre-Christmas shopping; happily Mandy doesn't miss this too much.

This was our first Thanksgiving in our new home, and the first meal of any consequence cooked in the New Kitchen (tm). Strictly speaking, the kitchen is not yet finished since the workers still need to install three windows and reopen our range hood vent, but for all practical purposes it's done, usable, and absolutely marvelous. A big change is that we've moved the dining room table into the kitchen and turned the dining room into a play room for Thomas. The net effect is that we're now spending more time in all of the rooms, rather than congregating only in the living room. Anyhow, the windows should be installed shortly and we're looking forward to declaring this particular chapter of house renovations to be finished.



We were joined by Grandma Leslie, Grandma Patti and Grandpa Yves, who all pitched in to make the meal happen. It was quite a feast, with a tender turkey (brined in a filebox - the only thing large enough to hold it), green beans, mashed potatoes, yams, corn, stuffing, and cranberry sauce. And pies too, three kinds in fact (apple crumble, pumpkin, and apple cranberry). We also made some spanakopita, a small way for us to include my brother D'Arcy, who made this dish for us a few Thanksgivings ago. When he cooked it, the end product was very tasty, but the making of it was a complete fiasco involving one low-level temper tantrum (my brother being both impatient and a perfectionist - a sometimes difficult combination).


In other news, we continue to struggle to get Thomas to sleep for any length of time away from his mom's side. He'll sleep a little bit if he's next to me, but only if we use a bit of bait and switch by letting him fall asleep next to mom and then moving him to me. Anyhow, we're all a bit tired and are trying to systematically and gently get him to sleep more (and for longer) in his crib. Complicating this project is that he has begun to teethe. There's much gnawing and drooling, in fact we've begun using a bib just to keep his shirt dry(ish) (without it he'll soak himself in no time at all). No teeth are showing yet, but we think we can see where they'll come through. All that being said, we're doing well and appreciate that the "problems" we're having are very normal.

(Although this post looks like it was posted by Mandy, it was actually posted by André - just a technoquirk that we didn't know how to remedy.)