Pre-Thanksgiving Dinner

We had, without planning, a pre-Thanksgiving dinner tonight.   My parents had just arrived in town and my in-laws were in to do some work on the house they’ll eventually be moving to and we all were hungry so we had dinner together at the house her—which is what we’ll be doing three nights from now for Thanksgiving dinner.

My husband cooked ribs, or rather warmed up some pre-prepared ribs he gets from his, “meat man” as we like to call him.  They’re good.   Darned good.   So good that it almost makes preparing your own ribs not worth the effort.

My mother-in-law cleaned up the dishes (she’s the best) while my mother took my daughter up to bed.   My daughter is having a very rough time lately with the dog injury and other things happening in her life.   We’re trying to be supportive and nurturing in the best ways we can, but she can push and push hard and she knows how to push emotional buttons.   Sometimes it’s very hard to tell if it’s true anxiety/hurt/anger or if (for example) she just doesn’t want to eat the, “disgusting, yucky, slimy” ribs and wants to get to have dessert for free.

She lost out tonight but it still tears at my heart because we have to almost force her to take the antibiotic and do the drops before we can put her to bed.   She has more extra to do than most children, and none of it is fun. Mimi helped, reading to her until she fell asleep though.  

The Big Boy Update:  My son was excited to see a magic video on Papa’s phone.   Gramps showed him some tricks and I tried to be Gramps assistant but failed miserably (and I know how to be a good assistant, I was just uncoordinated and dropped the ball—literally).   Then my son wanted to recreate a disappearing act using his father and a blanket.   He did really well, although we had to do a number of takes videoing him before we got it right.  He was so excited to see the completed video.   We’ll have to show Gramps tomorrow since Gramps is our family magician.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  In the middle of my daughter being upset about dinner and the dog, she wailed to me that we missed the treats with her class.   What treats, I asked her.   Apparently we were supposed to bring in treats for her classmates on her birthday (which was on a weekend) but we didn’t know or hear anything from her teacher.   But none of that matters, we missed it and it’s too late now, she said.   I feel awful.