Early Thanksgiving

Jack and I are visiting Minnesota for an early Thanksgiving with my family. Danny couldn't get the vacation time, with the Christmas holidays coming up so soon, but the secondary school districts I (and equally importantly, the swap mom) work at have the whole week off, so I wasn't about to miss out on a rare opportunity for Jack to see his Minnesota family. I know he misses his daddy and we wish Danny could be here with us, but it's wonderful to get to spend this time with my family before the holidays.

After a rather harrowing flight in which Jack demonstrated how uninterested he is in sitting still for four hours and I earned the respect and/or sympathy of any other parents seated around me, we made it into the Twin Cities on Thursday night. And Jack has enjoyed spending the past few days with his grandpa and grandma,





his Aunt Alison and cousin Ava,



and his Uncle Chris and other cousins, who I neglected to get pictures of but will add more later.

Today we had our early Thanksgiving dinner, and Alison and I got lots of sisterly bonding time preparing the turkey and stuffing and gravy and sweet potatoes while my mom made the rest of it at her house to bring over later. Jack was crawling around our feet, very dissatisfied to not get to be in on the action, until Alison had the grand idea of putting him up on the counter so he could see better. He was very pleased, and wasted no time familiarizing himself with the cooking accoutrements.



And I think our little man enjoyed the fruits of our labor very much. I've never seen him eat such a big dinner. He made it through the whole meal without squealing to get down, and is actually the only one of the five kids that sat at the table with us. Quite an honor for little Jack.



He has had a ball chasing the big boys around, climbing up the big staircase that his grandma has been trying to teach him how to go down backwards but he insists on approaching as he does all things in life, head first. He also stood up by himself for a few seconds for the first time today. He was holding onto my pant legs and then let go, looking up at me. I let out a yelp of excitement and told Alison what had just happened, who then replied "oh has he not done that before? He was just doing it over here a few minutes ago." Well!

I'm so proud of you, my sweet baby, who is not really much of a baby anymore! You are constantly amazing me!