It was a busy, busy, deadline-oriented work week for both Tom and me, but we miraculously managed to get all of our cooking done in time! This year, we divvied up the cooking responsibilities and Tom and I were responsible for bringing the sweet potatoes, cornbread and the vegan tofurkey. We also made a couple of different vegan cupcakes — apple cider with vegan buttercream frosting and pumpkin chocolate chip with cinnamon icing — and a vegan pumpkin pie.
Cindy and mom contributed the brussel sprouts, cranberry sauce and the other non-vegan foods (you know, turkey, stuffing, etc. etc.).
It was a nice, relaxing Thanksgiving with all-day noshing and a little bit of game playing (Last Word and Mad Gab).
As usual, Dylan was supercute in his red plaid shirt and white overalls, and as usual, he had an absolute blast. Unfortunately, he also wanted to play with light sabers!!
We realize that we’re going to have to keep a much closer eye on Dylan at family parties, now that he has become such a climber. Stairs, tables, chairs — there are no heights he won’t attempt to scale, no peaks he won’t attempt to reach. And the main problem isn’t getting up — it’s getting down. He doesn’t really know how to get down (climbing, not dancing). I remember a scene from an old Steven Bochco cop show from the ’80s (NYPD Blue?) in which a prankster led a cow up to the top story of a tenement building and the police couldn’t make the cow go back down. After much pushing and pulling of the cow to no effect, a homeless man who lived in the stairwell informed the police that cows “ain’t got no ‘down’ genes. They got ‘up’ genes, but no ‘down’ genes.” I think of that scene every time Dylan gets stuck on the stairs (or on a chair or table). He’s got “up” genes, but he ain’t got no “down” genes yet. (Sometimes, when he is being watched, he can be induced to go down on stomach or butt, but mostly he hurtles himself face-first into the void.)
The problem is that Dylan wanted to spend most of the day in the upstairs playroom, and if either of his mostly attentive parents turned away for a nanosecond to frost a cupcake or pop a tofurkey in the oven, Dylan would disappear in a puff of smoke, toddle rapidly toward the stairs, and begin his unsupervised ascent. And now he’s beginning to imitate Jason and Tyler more, so he begun to climbing up the stairs on the OUTSIDE of the banister. Luckily, he didn’t get too far up. He also wants to climb on top of Jason and Tyler’s playhouse and jump off (he gets no help on doing this).
In any case, we hope everyone down south had an equally enjoyable Thanksgiving. You were all in our thoughts…!
