the pieces of my life

My son really, really loves Star Wars. Hasn’t seen it yet, of course. However, I’ve authorized the gifting of Episode IV for Doodles for Hanukkah. However, I’m a little fearful. Last night we woke up from a bad dream. In his bad dream, someone was out to get him. Who? you might ask. Well of course. It was King Antiochus. If a Roman king can keep him up at night, just think what Jabba the Hut will do for him.

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Getting Pie dressed in the morning is always something of an ordeal. She has very specific ideas about what she wants to wear, but sometimes they can’t be formulated until she’s stood in front of her clothes for five minutes. “Today I want to wear… pants! No! A long-sleeved dress! No! A skirt! That one. With… not that top. No, not that top. Not that one either. Um, okay, that one!”

Doodles, of course, gets himself dressed in the morning. His clothes don’t always completely coordinate, but if he doesn’t care, I don’t care either. However, I noticed that he was wearing the same clothes week in, week out. The same five shirts. The same five pants. Which was surprising because he had so many other tops that I was pretty sure he liked.

And then, I realized something. Doodles wears five tops and five bottoms. On the weekend, Adam washes the clothes. He puts those five tops and five bottoms away. On the top. In the drawer. Of course. As an experiment, I went into the drawer, took the five tops and the five bottoms, and I placed them on the bottom of the clothes piles in the drawers. Choosing my five favorite shirts that he hadn’t worn in a while, I put those on the top. I also put vaguely coordinating pants on the top in the bottom drawer.

And, voila! The next week, we had an entirely new wardrobe on the boy. He cares so little about his clothes that he simply grabs whatever is on the top of the pile. So now I do a weekly clothes rotation, and he never knows that I’m choosing what he wears.

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My sister-in-law will out of town the coming weekend and we’ll be in Miami Beach shortly after that, so we got together yesterday with everyone to celebrate Hanukkah early. My SIL gave to Pie a purse with a zipper that Pie loved. But what was even better is that in the purse was a bunch of foreign money, primarily Egyptian money, from a trip SIL took a couple of years ago.

Pie took the money out, put the money back in. She leafed through it. She held it close. Oh, money! But then when she got to the coins, she took one look at the Twenty Piastres piece, and declared, “Mommy, it’s broken.” She handed me the coin. “You keep it. I don’t want it. It’s missing a piece.”

Don’t you go trying to pass off any wooden nickels to my little girl!

I liked this humorous guide to the traditional Thanksgiving seder.

It’s a sad comment that we live in a ‘burb fifteen minutes outside of Boston, and yet when we say we’re going into “the City,” we mean New York and we tend to do it about twice as often as we go into Boston.

Normally we host Thanksgiving. It’s one of my favorite things to do. Yes, that’s right, I enjoy hosting Thanksgiving. I love the planning. I love the cooking. I love the decorating. I even love the cleaning up after and that satisfaction of a fridge full of leftovers. Yes, I am a geek. Yes, my mother will wonder how she raised a daughter like me after that paragraph (rebellion against childhood upbringing, of course).

But, obviously, with our tiny little apartment kitchen, our dining room table in the middle of the living room, and the general disarray of our house life, we’re not hosting this year. Next year, ah, next year with my 36″ stove and wide counter space… But this year, we decided to make the trek down to the City to have Thanksgiving with my parents and the Tweedle Twirp. Of course, my parents’ city apartment is considerably larger than our home apartment, but the kitchen is 1) not that big and 2) completely not set up for cooking. It’s set up for getting bagels from Murray’s and burgers from New York Burger Company. In preparing what to cook (my mother’s exact words, “You can have Thanksgiving at our place. But I’m not doing any cooking!”), I quizzed my father. “Do you have a muffin pan?” I hear rustling and clanking, “Ah, no.” “Do you have a baking pan of any size? 8 x 8? 9 x 9? 9 x 13? Even a pie plate?” “Ah…no.”

So we’re not exactly cooking a full meal. The Tweedle Twirp ordered a turkey, stuffing, gravy, and green beans (who really likes cooking green beans?) from Balducci’s. I’m making bourbon-spiked sweet potato (and, yes, I’m going the gauche route and still added marshmallows; the bourbon is for me, the sweet potato is for my kids), sour cream-thyme muffins, and cranberry sauce. Tweeds is baking the pumpkin pie.

There’s the background. Yesterday I convinced Adam to work from home. He got up early and got online while I buzzed around like a madwoman. Got Doodles to school. Plopped Pie in front of a very rare morning of TV. Packed. Cleaned. Organized. Got us all out the door and to Doodles’s school by 10:30 a.m. (“We’re late! Come on, Pie and Adam!” “It’s only 10:25. Doesn’t it start at 10:45?” Does this man live on some planet where the time is adjusted funny? Whenever I tell him a starting time, he adds at least fifteen minutes to it.)

We make it to his school just on time to see our little pilgrim enter the cafeteria for their big feast. Each class made a part of the feast. Doodles’s class made corn bread. Another made soup. One made apple pies. And the fourth made–just like the pilgrims–fruit kabobs. After the feast, all the pilgrims got up and performed for us, such Thanksgiving classics such as “Albuquerque Turkey,” “The Tom Tom Song,” “There Are Many Things I’m Thankful For,” and “Tony Chestnut.” The singing ended at 11:14. At exactly 11:14:02 I had those kids in the bathroom and then out the door. We were on the road at 11:22. Which is awesome because apparently a few hours later there was an accident that caused the Pike to close a bit.

We made it down in decent time; we took on short cut and hit traffic outside of New Haven and Hartford and there was one relatively long pit stop when Pie had to pee, but we arrived in the city (meaning we crossed into the Bronx) about 4:30. It took a bit to get into Manhattan proper, but the great moment was when we got lost in Central Park. In my defense, in all my years living in New York, I never, ever drove. Really. Even on my own student film shoots at NYU when I had to rent a van, I got someone else to drive.

Why were we in Central Park in the first place? I had the brilliant idea that Adam would drop me and Pie off to watch the Thanksgiving Day balloons inflate (Doodles was invited as well, but he had no interest). I got the directions from Google Maps, which told us to take the 79th Street transverse. Only the 79th Street transverse was closed. So we entered at 72nd street. Which apparently takes us back up to 110th Street. By 5:30, Pie and I decamped at Central Park West and 81st.

In my mind, I envisioned a casual stroll among the balloons, a little oohing and ahhing, and then a quick subway back for dinner with everyone else. Not quite…

As we got to the corner, where we could see Buzz Lightyear and Spongebob we were stopped by barricades. First we were just stopped as Mayor Bloomberg passed. And then we were stopped as we were told that we had to enter the balloon inflating at 79th and Columbus. Pie was a real trooper and just kept periodically shouting, “New York! Yea, New York!” We headed over to 79th and Columbus. And waited. And waited. In masses and masses of crowds. Just waited. Finally we got to cross over and into the barricades where we got shuffled down to 77th Street.

We were smushed in, but that Pie didn’t care. “Where are the balloons? Where are the balloons?” Finally, after about an hour, we made it to the balloons. And Pie was entranced. “Who’s that? Who’s that?” We saw Pikachu (who I originally said, “Look, it’s Homer Simpson!”) and Ronald McDonald and Hello Kitty (who I said, “Look! A turkey!”) and Dora the Explorer (recognizable at 1000 paces), Snoopy (who I said was, “I have no idea who that is”), the Energizer bunny. At the end of the row was a Smurf. “Pie, I said. That’s a Smurf!” At that moment we came to a sudden halt (I will say that we were able to get right up to the barricades and see the balloons and it moved at an easy pace) as the mayor gave a press conference just in front of the Smurf. “That’s the mayor,” I told Pie.

Finally we made it down 77th Street. I did gave Pie the choice of going to the balloons on 81st Street or heading back down to the apartment for dinner. She thought about it and decided to head back, which was good because it was already after 7 and I was hungry.

We headed to the subway. You’ve never seen a kid so excited to be on a subway. “It’s the subway! Yea, subway! Why isn’t the subway moving? Oh, that’s silly! It is! Is this our stop? Is this our stop? Is this our stop? Yea, subway!”

Back at the apartment, we got ourselves some burgers, came back, played. My kids did nap in the car. Their normal bedtime is 7 p.m. At 10:15 Pie finally fell asleep. Doodles fell asleep shortly after.

So 10:15 bedtime. Any guesses on wake up time? Yep, 5:45 for Pie. A cranky 5:45. But she got up. And since she was up, we had the obligatory conversation about whether or not to go see the parade in person (general advice is to arrive by 6:30 a.m. to get a good place to see the 9 a.m. parade). My daughter exhibited a rare moment of wisdom and opted for the TV.

Happily, the Nana was up soon, so Pie had a playmate while Adam and I went back to sleep. I got up just in time for the start of the parade. The kids were very enthusiastic and sure enough, Pie yelled, “I saw that last night. I saw that bunny last night! I saw that star last night!” And as that giant Smurf passed by, that great big blue inflated Smurf, Pie yelled out, “Look! It’s the mayor! Doodles, that’s the mayor!”

And that’s our Thanksgiving until now, 9:30 a.m. Doodles is playing with Tinker Toys. Pie is doing naked tushie dancing in front of the parade on TV. Adam and my father are off picking up a pre-cooked turkey. And we’ve got a whole weekend ahead of us. Tune in for more turkey adventures. And happy Thanksgiving!

I am a sucker for holidays. No doubt about it. I love the decorating (both the house and the kids), the food, the crafts–you name it, I like it. And I like all holidays pretty much equally. We obviously don’t do Christmas and Easter, but I’ll decorate and throw a party for anything else–July 4th? How about a BBQ! Rosh Hashanah? Let’s invite all the kids over for apples and honey. Hanukkah? That’s our big bash of the year. Many of you longtime readers will remember the long running debate (like here and here) on holiday decorations at our house.

However, in the apartment, the holidays have gotten swallowed a bit. No decorations for Halloween. No inviting classmates over for Rosh Hashanah. There will be no big Hanukkah party. There’s no where to hang decorations.

But the one thing I can do is my dishes. I have dishes for every occasion. I put most of our toys, apparently some of my clothes (or else they’ve just walked off), our TV, our photos, our craft supplies–I put a lot–into storage, except I, of course, kept out the appropriate seasonal plates for the holidays we’d be spending in the apartment. If there’s a holiday, I have a plate. And preferably a bowl and cup to go with it.

But the thing is, I owned two turkey plates. And one of them got broke. I won’t say by whom (Adam) but it’s now broken and I have just one turkey plate. Which is unacceptable.

So Pie and I made the journey to Target to stock up on our turkey supplies. However, Thanksgiving apparently no longer exists at Target. Because at the beginning of November, we’ve gone straight to Christmas, do not pass Thanksgiving, do not collect any cranberry sauce. Target had preciously one set of wash cloths and a handful of paper plates with a Thanksgiving theme. I was annoyed; Pie was confused. “Where’s Thanksgiving? I don’t see Thanksgiving!” Who has Thanksgiving? Why Pottery Barn Kids, of course. For about five times the price. I like holiday decorations. I don’t like spending an arm and a leg on them.

How did this happen? Thanksgiving is definitely one of my favorite holidays and I’m bummed I can’t host this year. The least I can have is my damn turkey plates! Stupid retailers. Don’t they know they could commercialize Thanksgiving like every other self-respecting holiday?

Gobble, gobble! E-bay here I come.