I'm Thankful

As is usual with holidays, the past four days have just flown, and I'm now eyeballing another Monday. But the weekend was a splendid break. I got to spend oodles of time with the muffin and BabyDaddy, along with both sides of our family. Highlights of the long weekend:

Watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade - You know that I usually don't wax all sentimental in my blogs, but this is an exception. Curled up next to BabyDaddy and Lil' C in our favorite PJs, (we all had on our matchy-matchy flannels),and hearing the muffin chant "GOB-BLE! GOB-BLE!" as Tom the turkey headed down 5th Avenue was just about as good as it gets. I actually got teary when James Taylor sang "America the Beautiful". Seriously teary! It didn't help that Lil' C got up and was swaying and trying to "sing" along - God love him, all he needed was a little lighter to hold up!

Eating Granny's turkey (or not).
We had our first TDay meal with the in-laws. There was so much food spread out, you could just look at it and get full. We all sat down to eat, said the blessing and started loading up. The muffin is a bit of a picky eater - by picky, I mean nothing other than pizza, chicken nuggets, hot dogs, and PB&Js - but we thought he might enjoy some of Granny's home cooking. The first spoonful went in to Lil' C's mouth -- and then came right back out. My poor mother in law kept asking him, "Is Granny's food that bad?", as he proceeded to scrape off his tongue with his napkin. Oh well. I guess pizza isn't so bad after all.

Reading time.
I love to read, and thank the stars, my son does too. Some of my favorite times this past weekend have been sitting on the couch with Lil' C and 'reading' together - he perusing his picture books, and me with my novel. Whenever he gets tired of me paying attention to my book, he will find my bookmark, shove it in place, and say, "The End Mommy, Kay? Play wif me!"

The joy (and the pain) of Santa Claus.
So we've been pumping Lil' C up about Santa Claus like crazy. We decided to go to the mall today to shop a bit, and then thought we'd swing by and get the yearly picture with Santa. Lil' C was psyched. "Who are we going see today muffin"? "SAAAANTA CWAUSE!!!!" I was more excited that he was! We stood in line for about 15 minutes or so - he was still doing great. "Can you see him baby? There he is in that big green chair!" "Santa, Mommy! Santa!" He chirped. We got up to the front, and just as BabyDaddy was handing him over to Santa, I saw his little fingers dig into the back of BD's shirt. That's when I knew it was over. The screams that came from that little boy turned heads on the opposite side of the corridor. It sounded like we were pulling his finger nails out. God bless Santa - he really was a peach. BD ended up sitting on Santa's lap with Lil' C. So we have a picture of a ruddy-cheeked Santa, BabyDaddy, and squirming as far away as possible, a very perturbed looking Lil' C. A fast way to lose twenty bucks, I'll tell you.

Snuggle Time with BabyDaddy **ahem** I mean snuggle time with the FAMILY.
Lil' C has become a bit possessive of me lately. It's like he has this little internal radar system that beeps when BabyDaddy and I are in any way close. When we hug, he squeezes himself in between us, squealing happily, "Sam-wich! Sam-wich!" When we hold hands, he plugs himself right in the middle. We were watching TV earlier and BD had his arm around me. The muffin climbed up the arm of the couch, snaked down the back, and slid down the center. "Es OK - Here I am!" We just had to giggle.

Putting up our tree.
Don't give me smack about it either. I force myself to wait until after Thanksgiving. That's my mark - after that, all bets are off. I would have it up in November if I could! Regardless, it's up now - BD got everything down from the attic and we spent the afternoon hanging our favorite ornaments. Lil' C has been all right with it so far - he loves looking at the picture ornaments, and when we turned off the lights and turned on the tree, we even got a "Wow - COOL!", so I'd say that makes it a success.

I'm very sad that the weekend is over, but very happy that I have such a great family to spend it with.