“Perfect” Thanksgiving Planning
Days before the “incident”
Hey there friends and loyal readers – it’s been a long time since I’ve posted something, and Squarespace notified me that my auto-renewal was coming up, so figured I might as well let that light a fire under me and get the creative juices going. Truth be told, one thing they don’t tell you about being an aspiring dad-blogger is that your little content creator doesn’t really help generate the revenue in the first year. Our little Ellie is growing up and nearly a year old now, and although she’s adorable, and does a lot of funny stuff that could give me a one liner or two, she doesn’t really help with generating a solid story or post. But just my luck, Thanksgiving came up at renewal time!
It is worth giving a quick life update on the little nugget. I don’t like to talk about this too much, because I’m afraid of sending all my parent friends into a jealous rage spiral, but she’s….kind of an angel. She has slept through the night since she was about 4 months old, she eats solid foods like a champion and loves mealtime, she takes two great naps a day with relative ease, and she drops healthy loads that would make an elephant blush. Knowing that she’s a bit of a wunderkind is important backstory to what is about to unfold.
For those who don’t know me that well, there are very few things I love in this world as much as my wife and daughter, and two of those things converge every year: Alabama football and Thanksgiving dinner. I’m a proud graduate of the great football program that supplements it’s income with a university, and watching my alma matter play [spank] Auburn every Thanksgiving is something I look forward to for 364 days a year. Moreover, this year, I was afforded the luxury of getting not one, but TWO Thanksgiving dinners (both of which fell victim to some atrocious planning, but we’re only going to focus on the latter).
With COVID and her pregnancy, the holidays were a bit tricky last year, so this year, my wife and I decided that it would be fun to host our first Thanksgiving together as a family at our newish house, and declared that Saturday would be the day we did the deed. My wife is super Type-A, so we started planning about 3 weeks in advance: recipes, which dish will be used for everything, and most importantly: we had the timing nailed down to the millisecond. It was going to be a production, and we were going to nail it, because as Russ says, “The Separation is in the Preparation.”
My parents and grandpa arrived promptly at noon, which was perfect – the Iron Bowl (or Annual Bama vs. Little Annoying Brother bowl) kicked off at 12:30; as much as I love Alabama football, I’m actually not sure if I can hold a candle to my mother’s love for the Tide. And I’ll yada-yada most of the game, because for those who didn’t watch it, the first 59 minutes, the heroes of this tale in Crimson and White played like a JV squad (which was convenient, given that allowed me to cook the meal and drink some beers). It was just a miserable game to watch, but as it’s finishing up, my wife takes Ellie up for her afternoon nap, while I put the final touches on a beautifully spatchcocked turkey (if you’ve never spatchcocked a turkey, I highly recommend – it makes it easier to cook, and also allows you to say "spatchcock” incessantly throughout the day).
And then it all happened – everything converged at once, and I realized what a mistake we had made with timing. If you’ll recall from earlier, I talked about what a great sleeper Ellie is. At approximately 4:20 in the afternoon, there’s one minute left in the Iron Bowl, and somehow Bama is making a miracle drive that started on their own 3-yard line with 1:20 left in the game; Ellie is almost asleep; the turkey was just coming out of the oven.
My father and I had given up on the football game long ago at this point, but yet, there was faint hope. Bama is surgically moving the ball down the field. And with 20 seconds left – perfect fade to the back corner of the endzone. I erupt in joy, because this is probably the biggest (non-championship) moment & game for Bama football in over a decade. But remember when I said up above that Ellie was almost asleep? Guess what she wasn’t after that moment of jubilation.
And in a bizarre change of climate, I can feel the windows start to fog. I turn around and see the look of rage and steam coming from my wife’s nose and the look every father has seen before: the one that says ‘FIX THIS.’ She says to me, “Ellie is now wide awake and crying uncontrollably.” Ugggghhhhhhhhh she never fights her nap, and of course the one time she does, Bama is going to overtime in an instant classic Iron Bowl WHILE I’m supposed to be fixing the gravy and carving the turkey. In a move of utter emasculation, I delegate the carving of the turkey (in my OWN HOUSE) to my father, I grab my AirPods and queue up the game on my phone, and I head up to try to fix this.
So I’m in the pitch black, trying to rock her to sleep, while watching the one of the best Iron Bowls ever go into OT…then 2OT…then I think to myself “I bet the brightness to the phone is keeping her from going to sleep.” So naturally, I didn’t do anything about that and kept watching; Lil Girl’s gotta learn sooner or later. I tried to sit down and rock her in my arms, but alas, she cried whenever I wasn’t standing and holding her. 3OT comes and goes, and the epic clash remains tied. But then, Auburn started 4OT and couldn’t convert their 2pt conversion attempt (college football overtime rules are super dumb by the way), and on Bama’s attempt, they finally showed they can be closers. It was an epic game, viewed in pitch black by yours truly, and Ellie and I both knew we had a delicious Thanksgiving feast downstairs.
I didn’t even bother to get her to sleep. She and I mutually agreed that it was time to give up on her nap. Both of us wanted to get down to family and the amazing dinner that had been prepared for us, and Ellie showed up when it came to chowing down on Thanksgiving. Turns out, her Grandpa’s cranberry sauce was the runaway favorite in her mind.
Everything turned out absolutely great in the end, but that last hour of crunch time before the dinner gets served…I’m not sure I have the makeup for it. Add onto that the stress of the game + the little one’s nap schedule and it was a recipe for disaster. I truly am grateful to have such amazing family time and dinner together, and thankful to have this space to capture my thoughts so that one day Ellie can read them and laugh at what an idiot her dad is.
But, the moral of this story: maybe be more mindful of planning dinner time to not clash with the end of the biggest game of the year and/or baby’s nap time. Despite all the most careful planning, it can still blow up in your face.
P.S. – Daylight Savings Time sucks. You get your child on a perfect sleep schedule, and then in an instant it’s completely borked. Who tf thought this was a good idea?
