My Aunt Mamie died on Thanksgiving morning. She was 96. I wasn’t the best niece to her, and unlike my sisters, I rarely visited her in the nursing home. I also failed to make it to her funeral yesterday, so in an effort to do right by her for once in my life, I’m dedicating this post to her memory.

Although Aunt Mamie never had any of her own, she loved babies. Loved them, I say. If you merely showed her a photo of one, she’d immediately begin proclaiming her love to the pictured tyke and wouldn’t stop until she’d said, “God love your little heart,” and “I want to just eat you up,” a dozen or so times. But, oh man, if you showed her a real, live baby? And if you asked her to hold said real, live baby? Step back and watch the true love fest begin. Here’s Aunt Mamie with a four-week-old P.

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We just got home from our Thanksgiving trip to Arkansas.  It was a good time, filled with loads of traditional American Thanksgiving activities, like food preparation.

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The following is a passage from The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Bringing up Baby.

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I noticed a bulletin board at P’s preschool today labeled, “How to Cook a Turkey.”  It seems the teachers had asked the kids how their parents cook turkeys and had then transcribed the responses verbatim on  cut-out turkeys.  I was nervous as I looked for P’s turkey.  If it had been a board about preparing macaroni and cheese or corn flakes, I would have been much more confident about how I had likely been represented.  But a turkey?

I was really expecting P’s response to be a lot like little Clayton’s.

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Halloween this year was extra special, as we had an extra special visitor.

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