Thanksgiving 2010

Please forgive me...it is a week before Christmas and I am just getting around to posting about Thanksgiving. I looked back at my post from last Thanksgiving and I was also about three weeks behind. I guess not much has changed!!

This year - like last year - we decided to go to PA and visit with Keith's family for Thanksgiving. We had decided that we wanted to spend Christmas morning at our house this year (and start our own traditions with Jacob). This meant that we would be spending Christmas with my family (since they live so close) and thought it was only fair to spend Thanksgiving with Keith's.

We had traveled to and from PA quite a few times since Jacob was born and I would not describe any of them as "happy times" in the car (for Jake or us!). This time, we decided to do something a little different! We headed up early on Wednesday morning, leaving our house before 8am. We actually woke Jake up around 7:30am, got him dressed and got the last minute things in the car. Keith and I had packed the car on Tuesday night so there were just a few things - like Jake's monitor & the things he sleeps with - to get packed up. We stopped at Dunkin Donuts for coffee & donuts and then we were off!

Jacob ate "finger foods" (animal crackers, craisins & goldfish) in the car for breakfast and he spent most of the trip watching something (usually Elmo-related) on the portable DVD player we borrowed from my parents. That thing was awesome as it kept his attention for most of the trip!! We only made one stop on both the way up and the way back - at an outdoor playset at a Burger King in Winchester, VA (which is about halfway). Jacob really enjoyed getting to run around and play on the slide.

Once again, like we have been doing for most of trips to PA lately, we stayed with Keith's mom in her apartment. Jacob warmed up to my MIL very quickly and was calling her "Gama" almost from the time that we arrived. He would often add an "s" on the end (calling her "Gamas"), mostly because I was telling him for a week or so that we were going to Grandma's house. Still now he often says "Gamas" when we are talking about her or we are on the phone with her. It's quite cute!

It really made my MIL happy that he was so comfortable around her. He did, however, experience quite a lot of anxiety during most of the trip whenever Keith or I left the room, even just to go to the bathroom. He would cry for the one of us that was "gone" and he was not happy unless we were both in the room with him. This made the trip much more exhausting and I will be very happy when he is over all of this stranger anxiety (or whatever it is!).

We decided to have some different sleeping arrangements for this trip because anyone sleeping in the same room as Jacob usually doesn't make for good sleep. Jacob got to sleep in the pack and play in Marge's bedroom, Marge slept on the couch, I slept on an air mattress in the living room and Keith slept on a sleeping bag (on top of an egg crate for extra cushion!) in the foyer area. It's hard to "spread out" in a small one-bedroom apartment, but I think we did a good job of maximizing the floor space!

For the most part, sleeping wasn't really a problem (except that an air mattress & a sleeping bag can get uncomfortable after a few nights!) There was one night when Jacob woke up crying in the middle of the night and it seemed like nothing was going to soothe him. Keith and I both went in separately to try and settle him down, and around 2am, I even tried to get him to lay down with me and go to sleep in my MIL's bed. Unfortunately, he just wanted me to keep singing songs and didn't want to close his eyes and go to sleep! Eventually, I just had to leave the room and hope that he would stop crying and not wake up the people that live on my MIL's floor! Thankfully, after a short time, he did settle down and go back to sleep and he didn't have a problem the rest of the trip.

On Thanksgiving Day, we traveled to Keith's cousin, Suzie's house to celebrate with their family. At first, Jake was acting shy around everyone, but he soon warmed up and was having a great time! Since he is the only child there, he gets LOTS of attention! (There are actually four other "kids" but the youngest is 17!)

He instantly made friends with Molly, the family puppy. Molly loved Jacob and would follow him around. Especially when Jake had food! More than once, Molly stole pretzels right out of Jacob's hand! I think he was a little confused because he isn't used to being around a dog like that, but he didn't react negatively, he just asked for more pretzels!!

I told him that if he was going to eat, he needed to sit (instead of walking around). Of course, he didn't like that, but he obliged. Here he is eating his pretzels while sitting with "Gamas".

Three Generations of Weimers...

Jacob was napping when we ate an early Thanksgiving dinner, so he ate his by himself later in the evening. He wasn't a huge fan of turkey, but he loved the mashed potatoes and the bread.

After he ate, we all went outside for the "Grand Illumination" of Suzie & Tad's Christmas lights. Just like last year, Jacob got to "flip the switch" and turn on all of the beautiful lights.

Last year he was too little to really know what was going on, but this year he liked being outside and looking at the lights. It was a cold and rainy evening, but we stayed outside for a bit and enjoyed the glow of the lights and the "start" of the Christmas season.

We spent Friday just hanging out in Marge's apartment since it was really cold & snowy outside. On Saturday, Keith, Jake and I drove to have lunch with one of Keith's friends from college. It's always nice to see Liz and she even brought Jacob some great presents! Unfortunately, Jake wasn't super excited about sitting still in the restaurant so the visit wasn't as enjoyable as we were hoping for. Anyone with little kids knows how hard it can be to take a toddler to a restaurant. Thankfully, Liz has four (grown) kids so she just goes with the flow and totally understands what we are going through!!

On Sunday, we drove over to Keith's aunt Kay & uncle Barry's house to visit more with his family. We didn't know they were going to be there, but Keith's cousin Dave and his family came also. It was really nice to see everyone and spend more time together. We also had a great time watching the Steelers-Bills game (they are all Steelers fans and I was the lone Bills fan!). Even though the Bills lost in OT, it was fun bantering back and forth while all of us tried to figure out who was actually going to win the game!

Kay had all of her decorations up, including their Christmas tree and I was a bit worried about how Jacob would act around it. I didn't know if he would try to touch it or pull off the ornaments. Thankfully, he didn't really pay any attention to it! He was much happier playing with his matchbox cars on the floor! Aunt Kay even got down on the floor to play with him!

We tried to get a good picture of Jake in front of tree, but he didn't really want to sit still. And, since I was trying to get the lights of the tree, he ended up showing up really dark. Oh well, you can kind of make out his smiley face!

On Monday morning, we left early again (around 8am) and Jake did remarkably well in the car. More Elmo videos and a stop at the BK again for some running around and he was good to go. I'll leave you with this video that Keith took with his iPhone while we were at the BK on our way back home. As you can see, Jake was super excited to be able to stretch his legs and and he loved the crown that the BK worker gave him!



I hope that you had a wonderful Thanksgiving! Bring on Christmas....