When real moms cook Thanksgiving Dinner

Cranberry sauce is bubbling on the stove, the smell of turkey is wafting from the oven, and Martina McBride is singing “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” from my Macbook Pro. It’s all so nice and lovely and…

“CRASH!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

My son is playing with what used to be a basket. I got it for $4 at Target when he was a baby. Now he’s two, and it’s been destroyed and converted into some sort of moving…thing.

“Crash into Mommy!”

For the last two hours, I’ve been attempting to start working on Thanksgiving Dinner. Thanks to my busy schedule, high fatigue levels, and all-around general laziness, I have to pace myself with things like cooking big meals. A few dishes at a time. The last Thanksgiving Dinner I cooked (two years ago) left me so exhausted I swore I would never do it again. But here I am.

The music has changed to Michael Buble’s “Let it Snow,” and I have finally given into the pleas of the two-year-old to “watch Pingu?”

I was trying really hard to have a day that’s more intentional. Lately, Ezra has been getting a lot less of my attention as I attempt to catch up on my blog archives. He’s been watching too much TV and not getting enough hugs. Today was going to be different.

He watched TV this morning while I got ready to go to the store…which somehow took me a good hour. I was going to get a quick rinse-off shower, but once I got in, I forgot and got my hair wet out of habit. Darn. Now I have to dry it. Then there was the list making, laundry load switching, phone finding, back pack packing, apple juice making, and toddler dressing. Drat he has no clean clothes. Um, his oversized jacket will hide the fact that he is wearing a dress white turtleneck and navy-blue-with-yellow-stripes-down-the-sides sweat pants, right?

By the time I got to the store it was almost nap time. Ezra was good for a brief five minutes. Then he got restless, and ornery, and upset. Then there was the screaming and wiggling. I couldn’t think, even with the list in front of me. What did I need again? I’ve been in this situation before on multiple occasions, so this time I skipped half of what was on my list (getting only the things that I needed for today), and scrammed from the store with screaming toddler in tow before things got too out of hand.

I called my mom to ask her some questions about how to make this dinner (which we are sharing with a friend who just had twins, which means a little bit of extra preparations so I can drop it off ahead of time). I got home, tripped over the stray kitty that hangs out in front of our house, managed to sneak into the bathroom…quickly followed by the son who started hitting me and screaming, while I was trying to use the bathroom. He’s not normally this bad. Still on the phone with my mom, I dumped placed Ezra in his crib, turned on his stars and music, and left. I sunk into a chair, finished talking to my mother, and then brought the groceries in from the car.

I took a deep breath. Then I updated my Facebook status.

“Keep calm and make a turkey…”

I turned on the Christmas music and started eating chocolate covered peanuts a healthy lunch and worked on the turkey.

Two more phone calls to my mom and a wrestling match with the bird, I somehow the turkey got stuffed and in the oven, but not before Ezra woke up. I fixed him hotdogs with ketchup a healthy lunch, sat him at the table, and kept working.

I heard crying from the table. “All done hotdogs, wash hands? Wash hands?”

I gave him a stool and turned on the water at the kitchen sink (after I got the turkey out, of course). He stayed there for a few minutes playing with the water while I worked on the stuffing.

Then I brought a puzzle, some blocks, and trains out into the kitchen for him to play with.

“Mommy try?”

Work on food. Wash hands. Fix whatever toy he needs help with. Repeat.

“Get hug?” 

Work on food. Wash hands. Hug son. Work on food. Wash hands. Fix whatever toy he needs help with. Repeat.

He got bored with the toys. I got out his Elmo placemat and wipeoff markers.

Work on food.

“Mommy opit?”

Open pink marker. Work on food.

“Mommy opit?”

Open green marker. Work on food.

“Mommy opit?”

Open brown marker. Work on food.

 “All done marker!” 

Start loading dishwasher and try to ignore it.

That brings me to the basket crashing.

I looked around the kitchen. Markers. Blocks. Puzzle pieces. Grocery bags (still full of food). Juice cup. Stuff pulled out of the cupboards. iPhone. Laundry.

This is life as a real mom. 

So now here I am. My kid is watching TV. I’m listening to the Chipmunks. And my cranberry sauce is still simmering on the stove waiting to be run through the food mill and canned.

But I have a slight problem. I have two big pots. One is on the stove with the sauce. The other is in the fridge with french onion soup with it. So I have no pot to fill up to can the sauce. Which means I have to empty the one from the fridge into something else, try to wash the buttery, oniony smell and oils out of it, and get back to work on the sauce.

And this is just the turkey, stuffing, and cranberry sauce. Now do you see why I have to space it out?

I suppose it would help if I didn’t stop to write a blog post in the middle of trying to cook my Thanksgiving Dinner. Oh well…

———–

An hour later. Cranberry sauce is boiling in the canning water. Ezra is sleeping. I’m almost done with this blog post. Then…what’s that smell? On the back burner of the stove is what is left of canning lids in a boiled-dry, now smoking pan. True story. I am a real mom.