My Journal - Week 60 (09Oct10)

October 09, 2010

My Journal - Week 60 (09Oct10)

Happy Thanksgiving... Canadians! (American's, you're next!)

Saturday was our day to have Thanksgiving Dinner. It's the one time of the year (other then Christmas or Easter) where my mother cooks her infamous Turkey dinner. And everyone loves her Turkey, even Hunter! Hunter had never yet tasted fresh cut turkey until today. I decided that since he's allowed to eat whatever we eat (as per our doctor) I would try and fore go the usual baby food in the jar (even though it's organic) and substitute it for a real home made meal. I mashed up the turkey as mashed up as I could get it, (which looked more like stringy then mashed) before attempting to give Hunter it to taste. Unfortunately Hunter is a very wise child and knows that if it didn't come out of a jar, it can't be his dinner. I offered him a taste, which he reluctantly took from me (oh if you could see the initial expressions he gives when he tastes something new) and began chewing, chewing, chewing and ultimately storing, storing, storing (in his cheeks) the bits of turkey I gave him. Here I was thinking he was actually swallowing the small pieces after he had been chewing them for so long, but nope. They were being stored in side the mouth, by each cheek, just like a chipmunk. Some of it managed to get swallowed, but the rest I simply gave up and removed it since the stored turkey was beginning to wad up. In the interest of Thanksgiving I (very sneakily) opened a jar of Turkey and Veggies (appropriate organic baby food for the occasion) and somewhat sneakily plopped in the remainder of the mashed/shredded up left over turkey bits from his first bowl. I knew I would make this work. And by pure luck and sheer disguise, it worked! Who says you can't feed your little one a turkey dinner? Albeit undercover, Hunter was able to eat his Thanksgiving turkey dinner! And, just for fun - Aunty Jane wanted to be a part of giving Hunter is very first Turkey dinner. Of course, in absolute family fashion, she made sure to mention to Hunter that it was not her who was deceiving him by giving him the hidden turkey inside of his baby food, it was his Mommy's doing. I inevitably got ratted out! Oh well, he ate the whole thing.

We had our fantastic dinner, then we relaxed and played with Hunter - who was showing off his basketball skills to everyone. Hunter's Nana (John's Mom) was in town visiting back from the States, so it was nice for Hunter to have both sides of his Grandparents there on such a lovely holiday. After the rest from eating, it was time for family fun - which has been a huge family tradition for us ever since I can remember. Games games games. Over the years we had played cards, Rumoli, Scrabble, Balderdash, Scategories, (and when the Texas Hold'em rage was all anew) Poker. This year though we played the new Monopoly card game. That was a whole lot of fun! Since our game playing days were rapidly changing we seemed to not stay up as late playing. In years gone past, our family would play these crazy games until well past midnight into the wee hours of the morning. I figured as we were all getting older, perhaps those days were long gone - but after discovering this Monopoly card game, we have rekindled that late night game play! We didn't finish playing until after 2:00 am! Hunter did manage to stay up until 12:45 am, (dare I even say which is actually early for him as of the last month or two) but I guess with all the excitement and turkey (which is known to secret a sleepy hormone) he fell asleep out of exhaustion. In any case, it was so nice to have that same kind of fun with the family all over again.

Here are some photos of the evening!