gobble gobble

so everyone i know (which is like a bajillion people cause i'm so popular) is blogging about thanksgiving and since i'm not one to follow the crowd, i thought i'd blog about something else.

yeah right.

thanksgiving has always been sort of an weird time for me. most people spend thanksgiving with their families. gathering around the table giving thanks, or perhaps sharing with the family how your younger brother lost his job, is getting a divorce and is robbing liquor stores to feed his drug habit just to see what mom and dad will say. Ah..the american tradition. Never one to let sleeping dogs lie...

i've had a tradition too. it's been either one of three things. first, going home with a friend to be with his family (sometimes awkward, sometimes glorious). second, staying by myself, reflecting on the past year and giving thanks for all the wonderful people in my life (aw!!!). or third, my brother andy would somehow make it to where i was and we would eat McDonald's and smoke cigars.

i remember one thanksgiving in particular. i was living in boston (i think, it all seems to run together now) and i was coming to new york to have thanksgiving with casson and anna.

casson and anna were living in student housing together at the Pratt Art Institute in Brooklyn. This was a little unusual since casson and anna were married but were living with a roommate that i'll just call "Larry". casson got accepted to Pratt before they got married, then when they moved to Brooklyn he was already signed up for student housing.

with Larry.

imagine being newlyweds, moving cross country, then having to share your bathroom with a complete stranger. who smokes. and eats kimchi like i eat macaroni and cheese with ketchup.

there were times that anna couldn't get into her "apartment" without casson because their building had a security guard and only students were allowed in. so she would get off of work and have to wait for casson to finish up whatever it was he was doing, then meet up with him and finally go home.

everyday.

not only that, she would have to sneak out in the morning since no one was allowed to have sleepovers. crazy. this went on until they could finally afford to get a place of their own.

anyway, this was their situation and i was going to make it even more cramped by coming down for thanksgiving. i couldn't wait. i met casson in Brooklyn and he took me over to their "apartment" and i remember how excited we all were over seeing each other. friends get that way i guess.

while anna was cooking, casson and i decided to go and check out the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. we were excited because new york was still new to both of us and this seemed like a real new york thing to do. in actuality, the exact opposite was true.

unfazed by the rain and the cold fall air, we took the subway down to the parade. unfortunately we came down in the middle of it and we weren't able to get closer than 2 blocks away.

but you could still see the balloons.

Blues Clues

Sponge Bob

Gizmo

Pam Anderson

i made the last two up because i wished the balloons we saw were as cool as those would have been. after seeing enough of the parade, casson and i were famished. we found ourselves in a real pickle. Brooklyn was at least 45 minutes away, anna was probably not finished cooking(which means we'd have to wait longer to eat) and staring us in the face was the one and only white castle in manhattan.

fate had been calling our names should we listen?

we each got a sack of 10 cheese burgers with fries and a drink. as we sat and ate our delicious mini treats of goodness, we guiltily thought of anna, back in Brooklyn, making mash potatoes, turkey, grave, cranberry goo. we made a pact that this meal would never be mentioned. it would be as if it had never existed. poof. gone. white castle? never heard of it.

we trekked back to Brooklyn to the apartment and to a wonderful thanksgiving dinner prepared by anna, a good friend and a loving wife. we even had seconds to lay to rest any suspicions she might have had. we spent the rest of the night watching movies that i can't recall.

three years later i was living in new york, across the way from casson and anna. thanksgiving rolled around and i was invited once more for turkey dinner. as we sat around the table giving thanks, i asked anna if casson ever told her about how we ate white castle before coming back to Brooklyn for thanksgiving dinner.

anna looked at casson

casson looked at me

i looked at the floor...

ah...the american tradition..

sleepless in hillsboro

how things have changed in the herod household these last few weeks!!

we went from two fun loving adults (in my case that may be stretching the truth) and a dog to two responsible adults(see previous parenthetical) with a newborn and an increasingly jealous, attention starved dog.

it's an amazing transition.

you can prepare for the little one's arrival only so much. you read the books (in my case i get the CliffsNotes version from skyla), prepare the nursery, take child safety classes and talk to your friends who have become new parents, but you can never fully understand the enormity of what you will be bringing home until you do.

when i was first given riley in the delivery room i honestly had no idea how to hold her. i never practiced on a doll like my brother andy did when he was 22 (what a weirdo). i just held her out at a distance and stared at this new person. she was 1/2 me, 1/2 skyla and 100% her own unique and beautiful self.

but mostly what i was thinking about was when would someone take her from me so that i wouldn't be responsible if something happened. to me she was so fragile, so new, so breakable. plus, i had no idea what i was doing!

we spent two nights in the hospital and during that time we were given a sneak peak into the coming weeks. the sleepless nights, the constant pep talks we gave each other, the introduction to breastfeeding and our constant attempts to get the lactation specialist to come home with us.

for almost two weeks we had both grandmothers staying with us, letting us sleep after one of our "sleepovers". This was where skyla, riley, chloe and i would all stay up late and gossip about school and who we thought was cute and prank call boys at their house and then hang up. loads of fun, but we didn't get any sleep!

but now we're on our own. it's a little scary but a wonderful feeling of completeness. this is our little family unit. we've started something we will live to finish.

it's daunting, rewarding, spiritually renewing and something that, as cliche as it sounds, changes you forever.

but most of all i can't wait till she learns to talk, prank calling will be so much fun!