First Thanksgiving

I think it went pretty well.  Little Man napped twice in his Baby K'tan carrier and when he was awake he was pretty much all smiles and coos.  And he was absolutely mesmerized by my sister-in-law's ceiling fan. I think he could have stared at it for hours. Too bad we don't have one in our apartment. And I'm pretty sure talking our landlady into getting one—just to keep our baby occupied—is not an option.

I'm glad that Dude has a large family.  His sister has two boys  (ages 6 and 4) and lives only 6 miles away from us. His brother has a boy and three girls (boy: 6, girls: 4, 2 and 2 months), the youngest only 5 weeks younger than Little Man.  So, hopefully, he'll have a good relationship with his cousins. It would be nice, considering Little Man will be the only cousin without a sibling. That being said, I don't have any real relationship with any of my five cousins. I get along with them OK, the rare instances that I see them, but I wouldn't say we're friends.

Part of that could be due to the fact that I'm several years older than my cousins.  I'm 4 years older than my male cousin, and 6 years older than my eldest female cousin.  Maybe the chasm once brought on by age is too wide?  Though I find that somewhat silly now. I'm 39 and my one cousin is 33.  When we were 9 and 3 it was a HUGE age difference. But now? Not so much. Alas, there were other issues that I won't go into and I think MY familial relationships will only be cursory.

So I truly hope that Little Man will be close with his cousins.  I hope that my SIL's boys will tolerate him tagging along (since Dude is really close with Big Sis and we spend a lot of time togehter) and that when they're older, the age difference won't matter so much.  If not... I hope Little Man is the type of person to make lasting friendships. I've made a few, though it took me until my 20s to do so.

I have great memories of Thanksgiving from my childhood. I'd organize plays (of the first Thanksgiving, though we were all Pilgrims and my Standard Poodle was the Indian) and we'd sing and entertain our parents. All orchestrated by me—the oldest and the ringleader.  Little Man's cousins don't seem to do that (well one does) and they're more rambunctious. But I hope that he creates good memories too.  And next year he'll be able to eat turkey!