Our Thanksgiving

(He's not really dead...he's just bobbing for apples)

While it was technically Lila’s second Thanksgiving, we like to think of this year as her first: it was her first time watching her parents slowly give themselves nervous breakdowns trying to throw it themselves.


(Who needs a dining room table when you can rent one for $19 a day?)

Not being able to make it back East to see our families, we decided to invite 7 people over for dinner. Thanksgiving is a time for overreaching!

Josh took on the turkey and stuffing, while Christine handled everything else – mashed potatoes, brussel sprouts, sweet potato pudding with crème fraiche, apple turnovers, and pumpkin pots de crème. We also had some key contributions from our invited guests. Lila was in charge of crawling all over the kitchen, getting dangerously close to the oven.


(the spread)


The night before Thanksgiving, nearly everything was (miraculously) in order, except for one thing: the turkey we thought was going to arrive thawed on Wednesday came frozen. This nixed the brining plan, and Josh spent the entire afternoon watching the turkey brick float in a cooler of cool water, willing it to defrost, and then lay awake most of the night panicking that it might either not be thawed enough in the morning, or have thawed so early that it was spoiled. Christine lay in bed next to him, also awake, panicked that everything else might go wrong. That’s why me make a good couple: we divide the panicking duties well.

But the next morning, the turkey was thawed and cool, and everything seemed in order. Lila was decked out in the outfit we’ve been waiting for her to grow into, an adorable dress from France (thanks Karen and Tim!) that it is impossible for a child not to look cute in, and the guests started arriving at 2:30. There were Lisa and Eric (who arrived ten minutes after landing at the airport from producing a TV show in New Orleans), and their baby Sascha (the happiest, clappiest baby in the world, also known as the Baby Whose Flawless Sleeping Habits Have Been Making Us Jealous for Eight Months). Also, Andy, Meredith, and Avery (known to readers of this blog as the Backwards Sheep), Dan and Gillian (from Josh's work), and Adam, a co-worker of Lisa’s, who dealt with a room full of yelling babies like a champ.


(La belle bébé)



(Lila, Sascha and Avery...the definition of parallel play)



(Meredith, Avery and Sascha)


All told, the meal came off nearly according to plan. While the babies all played on the lawn, we hovered in the kitchen, staring at heating pans and pots begging them not to let us down. The turkey came out only an hour after anticipated, and, amazingly, emerged looking very intact in the face of the 400 puncture wounds it suffered from Josh’s overzealous meat thermometer poking.

Just as we can’t seem to take a picture that doesn’t include four electrical cords dipping in like ivy, we also couldn’t find an attractive setting for the finished turkey, so the top of dryer had to do, with a tool box as backdrop. But Lila seemed to approve of it, in theory, even if she refused to eat any turkey. (She did prove a big fan of mashed potatoes and Gillian’s green-bean casserole. She also demonstrated that food-throwing is not a kitchen-only habit for her. Very versatile, our baby.)


(Doesn't it look as though Josh has just pulled the turkey out of the dryer?)



(turkey and sweet potatoes)


It was a great time with some great new friends, and we proved to ourselves that we can handle a holiday. Now we just have to find a way to do it without it upsetting our mental health.



(Even when she's angry, she's cute!)