Thanksgiving

A snowman called "Georgia"

I overheard my sister once, in a quiery about her growing girls, respond that this was her “favorite age”– she has said that at each stage of their childhood. Each new phase passing along new adventures and new advantages so that she never really mourned the loss of the old phase.

When I overheard her Jack was a tiny babe. He was nestled in the crook of my arm and I thought, “Oh! but how, how could anything be as wonderful as this?”

Four year old Jack is darn near perfect.

Last week was his little preschool’s Grandparents Feast where he was sufficiently feted over by his Grumpa, his GrandLady, and his AunT (who stood in for his Momma in France). Our holiday table now has a wobbly little paper turkey with feathers and featues glued carefully on by Jack. (He loves to glue.) And on Tuesday, fighting the cabin fever that came about by way of all of us being sick, Jack and I escaped to the afternoon movie. We watched Madagascar 2  and shared a ginormous and full-priced popcorn (who knew that Tuesday is Bring-Your-Own-Container day???) He’s a good movie date. He’s still small enough to sit on my lap without impeding my view.

This weekend we’ve come up to The Lake where a blanket of perfectly sticky snow allowed Jack and his Daddy to make a magnificent Snowman. His name is Georgia, if you’re interested.

Last night, after a huge Thanksgiving Feast that left 13 people dazedly fat and happy (Jack, no. 14, ate Fruit Loops), the smallest pilgrim was ready for bed. Dressed in his footie jammies and yummy smelling from his bath, he snuggled up against me and whispered, “Mommy. I love you most more.”

Four year olds whisper about as subtlely as a Belle Tire ad. The addition of the “most more” comes from a little thing he and I do where I say, “I love you, Jacky” and he responds, “I love you, too, Mommy” and then it’s a matter of “I love you more/I love you most/I love you most more/I love you most most” and on and on until we give up for giggling.

And then it was on to playing spider. We make little spider hands and sing “Itsy Bitsy Spider” which segues into a weird little adventure for Mommy Spider and Baby Spider or Jack Spider where they eat breakfast, get dressed, go to school (enter Mrs. Brown Teacher Spider), and run errands… Jack delights endlessly in the Spiders going to the Doctor Spider because, inevitably, the little spider will need “pokies” in his legs and that will set Jack off on either acting very brave or crying out on his little arachnoid alter-ego’s behalf.

Because we aren’t at home– but in the great white north for the Thanksgiving weekend, we are, Robby, Jack, Philbin, and I, in one big bed. The little spider game is indicative of this rare treat– and I am, at the end of a really great Thanksgiving, most grateful for this little exchange between my too-quickly growing son and me.

I’d freeze him at Four Years Old forever except that I’d hate to miss out on what Four And a Half and Five bring.

My sister, for one brief shining moment is right. Yikes.

Sisterhood of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

My nieces and my sister had a grand plan to go to the midnight showing of Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants last night. I went along for the ride– the first movie was cute enough and I don’t get to spend a lot of time with my nieces.

Today I feel like the floor of the movie theater– slighty sticky and tread on.

We drove to a theater about 35 miles away. Our local theater wasn’t showing it at midnight. My sister has a Toureg. [You might remember that it was MY dream car first... but God, laughing, put me in a Tracker and my sister in a sweet VW Toureg. Sigh.] She “let” me drive. Maddie, at 15, has her permit and normally would tackle anyone with keys for the chance to drive– particularly on the highway which better suits her lead foot. (It’s an inherited lead foot.) Maddie begged off on account of her leg being in spasms. She and her sister, Keegan, are in ballet camp all week. Ballet camp, by the way is more akin to time trials for ____ [insert grueling sport of choice here]. At the end of the week the girls that are still able to stand on their toes get into the Company. The other girls, I presume, take their ability to stitch on ribbons to shoes to some sweatshop.

At the theater I realized that my ticket said “12:05.” It was 11:13. The rationale, my sister explained, was that it might be a packed theater and at first-come-first-serve seating we might end up with crummy seats. Oh. Yes. Falling asleep in a good seat would be much better. We joined a queue that was, predictably, all female. My sister kicked herself for not being as smart as the two girls wearing sweats and pajamma bottoms. They looked comfortable. We’re dumb, we agreed. (On the other end of the spectrum was the trio that came in costume– one in a dress as Lena, one as Bridget, one as Carmen. We aren’t sure what happened to the Tibby portrayer. Maybe she had a boyfriend and was, therefore, in the line on the opposite side of the lobby for “Pineapple Express”..?)

Occasionally a knot of men would infiltrate the Sisterhood line… One pair was particularly amusing in that the boy in front barreled ahead in a man-like way of not wanting to ask for directions or notice his surroundings… while his friend, lagging behind had the dawning suspicion that the weren’t in the right line all over his face. One boy actually belonged in the line– he had a girlfriend. I’d have felt sorry for him if he wasn’t so obviously gay. He bore a striking resemblence to a young Jimmy Osmand. Lots of white teeth. He seemed more excited than the girl.

We finally got into the theater– Maddie’s big purse opened and our snacks were distributed. Maddie’s purse is her schoolbag. She’s kept it with her– on her– all week. My theory is that there is a severed head in there but she insisted she was just trying to get used to having a schoolbag again. High school pressure– does it never end? I had Twizzlers, by the way. And a ginormous tub of salty popcorn to share with Trish and Maddie. Keegan and her pal, Bryn, had large tubs of Coke Zero. (Bryn, by the way was so quiet I’m not sure I even knew until the point that we were picking seats that she was even with us. I like Bryn. Out of all Keegan’s pals she’s the nicest to me.)

Maddie and Keegan set up my new cell phone with T9. Supposedly it will make texting easier but since it took three of us 10 minutes to get the word “me” typed in (and then with the “ab” function and not the T9) I’m not so sure.

The theater filled up with females. Loud, chattering groups of females. Trisha and Terri aren’t kind to movie talkers. We shush them. So, as the movie started, our worst theater nightmare came true– dozens and dozens of yakking girls saying things like, “Oh my GAWD!” and “I love that dress she’s wearing– oh my GAWD it’s so cute!” Sweet Moses. Shut the America Ferrera up!

The movie itself was better than the first one– all of us agreed to that… a nice little chicklet flick… It would have been better without the laugh-track from an early 1980s sitcom (complete with gasps at the cute boys/ interjections of “Awwww!” and “OMG!”, etc.) Trish gave bonus points to the audible sobs from the twits next to us. I can’t remember why they were crying. Maybe our respectful theater behavior was distressing them?

My only beef– and it’s my fault because I only read the first book. Maddie had it with her on a trip we all took a long time ago– was that it ends with SPOILER ALERT the damned pants being lost. WHAT? Well, link arms, girls and sing “Kum By Ya”– Lalala, We lost the pants… HUH?

I guess that rules out a sequel.