DeSoren Family

By tradition (meaning we have done it 2 times or more), we should have been flying down to Phoenix for a family Thanksgiving. But this year the Grandparents decided not to hold the annual Turkey/BBQ feed and instead hold a big family Christmas event in Salt Lake City. So we had to fend for ourselves. Enter a new family tradition; Thanksgiving alone, but alone as a family.

Anthony and Jayme started the cooking adventure Wednesday night with the cooking of the pumpkin pie. Early on, Anthony decided to let this be Jayme’s adventure with minimal adult intervention. Jayme always wants to help cook and mix things, so we took this chance to let him be in charge and take some ownership of the Thanksgiving dinner. With the exception of working the oven and helping with a few measurements, Jayme made the pie all by himself.

After the pie was in the oven, it was time to Brine our Turkey. Jayme and Anthony got down all the spices and salt. Jayme was thrilled that once again, he got to mix everything together. But the highlight was touching the dead cold turkey with his own hands and best of all he got to hold the turkey heart.

Once the morbid fascination with dead things was over, we dunked our bird into it’s bath for a overnight soak, we then all ran upstairs for our own nighttime showers and then bed.

Turkey Day morning arrived and Anthony was up first as usual. He started by cleaning up the dining room table and pulling down his Grandmother’s Thanksgiving china.

Jayme came bouncing down the stairs and began singing a Happy Thanksgiving Day song that he had just created. Then after a breakfast of pumpkin pancakes and some morning cartoons, Jayme was ready to cook.

Like the pumpkin pie, Anthony let Jayme be in-charge of the cranberry sauce (apart from operating the stove). Jayme used the orange juicer to squeeze out the orange juice, and used the zester on the orange peel. He measured out the sugar and then mixed everything together. After Anthony got the stove set up, Jayme stood on his little red stool and stirred the cranberry sauce until completion. Jayme was very proud of his creation.

Once Joshua was awake, he was politely shoved out the door to go get some more food. Last minute it Jayme and Anthony decided to add Disney’s Brown Derby Cobb salad to the dinner menu, we love that Cobb salad and since it was our dinner we decided to spoil ourselves. So out the door Josh must go!

We had a simple menu for dinner to prepare for:

• Orange Carrot Jello salad
• Disney’s Cobb Salad
• Hawaiian Bread Rolls
• Dressing
• Turkey
• Homemade Turkey Gravy
• Mashed Potatoes
• Sugared Yams
• Candy Carrots
• Glazed Ham

We had invited Joshua’s boss and longtime friend, John, to come and have dinner with us. But when we learned that he was still sick and not coming, we decided to kill the ham from our menu and save it for Sunday dinner.

The one dish we all prepared together was the fresh whipped cream for the pumpkin pie. Joshua decided to enter the kitchen and try to teach Jayme how to make whipped cream on Anthony’s new mixer. Ever watch the movie the Color Purple? Remember the scene when Mister decides to cook breakfast for Shug? Yeah…. enough said. Luckily Anthony was quick enough to make them use the plastic mix guard or it would have been a real fun mess.

The fun continued when Josh and Jayme offered to peel the potatoes. They decided to peel directly into the sink, with the plan to use the food disposal to grind up the peels. It was a great plan until the sink got clogged and Anthony had to go get the plunger. But with effort and great determination, Joshua was able to get the clog removed from the drain and the Great Thanksgiving Sink Crisis of 2012 was adverted. We have never had any positive experinaces with our kitchen sink. A few months ago, Joshua broke the handle on the faucet and it was a 6 hour DYI nightmare to replace it. Perhaps it’s more fair to say, Joshua has never had any positive experinaces with our kitchen sink.

At 3:30pm the bird was done, golden brown and delicious looking. We all took a break from cleaning and cooking and everyone headed off to watched TV for an hour or two. Jayme’s new TV show is the 1950’s show Dennis the Menace. There is something about that show that Jayme really relates too. We think it is because the kid is always getting in trouble but never means to. Jayme has found he has a lot of similarities with Dennis. As he watches the show he will jump up and yell smiling for ear to ear, “That is just like me!”. The funny thing is we see it too!

Jayme enjoys a lot of 50’s and 60’s tv shows. The dialog is very straight forward, the plots simpler and the actors verbalize and over describe what is happening. It’s all very helpful for Jayme to process what is going on and enjoy it.

After our break, Jayme ran upstairs and decided to layout his special Thanksgiving clothing. He chose a bright orange long sleeve t-shirt, the brown linen pants Grandma sent him and a white short sleeve oxford dress shirt. Jayme loves to dress up for special events and it was so cute to see him put so much effort into his wardrobe, without even being asked. This was a far cry from Thanksgiving a last year when we had to force Uncle Sam into a dress shirt for dinner.

With everyone dressed up and the table set, we served out the food. Even though Jayme made most of the food, his picky eating skills took over. He had two bites of his turkey leg, a few bites of his cranberry sauce, one bite of his salad, and a few bites of everything else. But he had no problems eating 3 hawaiian rolls, 4 large glasses of sparkling apple cider and a large slice of his pumpkin pie. Since it was Thanksgiving the Dad’s didn’t worry to much about it and just enjoyed our dinner together as a family.

After dinner Anthony and Jayme made up a care basket from the leftovers and pushed Joshua out of the house again to drop it off to John who was sick and could not make it to dinner. While Joshua was on his mission of mercy, Anthony and Jayme sat down on the couch and watched the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving specials on Blu ray.

We ended the evening with a wonderful little surprise from Jayme. He asked for a bedtime story and when we tucked him in; Jayme read the story to us. We worked so hard over the summer break to get his reading up and now he is really doing it. It just made our day!

We have so much to be thankful for this year, but the biggest thing we are the most thankful for is Jayme in our lives.

PS. Photos are up on Shutterfly for those who wish to see them.,

So here we are again playing catch up with our family blog. This time instead of trying to make a blog out of each event we failed to post, get ready for a shorter mega blog.

SCHOOL UPDATE

The first big event following our road trip to Disneyland was the first day of school. Jayme returned to the same school same classroom and same teachers he had the year prior but this time as a second grader.

Jayme is in a blended special supports classroom K-3. He was so excited to get back to school. Over the summer we worked very hard on his reading and sight words. Something he could not wait to share with this teachers. After mentioning Jayme’s great new reading skills to his teachers at open house, Jayme packed in his backpack one of the books we worked on over the summer and the next day after school kept 2 of his teachers captive in front of the school until he finished reading the WHOLE book to them. He was so proud.

Since summer ended we have really seen some major growth from Jayme. Behavior wise he is making much better choices and his whole persona is much calmer and he seems to have more normal self-control. We have also seen some big physical growth, not only in height but his whole posture is different. One of his therapists even noted that he looks like he is standing taller in a figurative sense. At some point we crossed some sort of developmental growth mark. Each day our little boy fades farther and farther away and this new older kid is starting to emerge.

But with all of his growth he is still behind other kids his age. It’s funny we have had Jayme now for almost 2 years and we are still finding things that shock us… like up until today he had never had a KitKat bar.

DAY CARE

Since right before the school year ended in June Anthony has been the designated stay at home parent, having been laid off from work due to lack of customers and polite nepotism. This was great as it allowed us to keep Jayme home and not in a expensive summer day care. One of Anthony’s strongest summer memories was spending them at home with his Grandmother. So it all worked out great for both of them and allowed Anthony to make new memories with Jayme.

But once Jayme was back in school, the boredom of staying home alone was too much to bear and Anthony found a new job. It was not until after he was hired that both of us realized that it has been almost 2 years since both of us worked full time at the same time (our wallets noticed but we had not). Since the day Jayme moved in at least one of us (if not both) has been on leave, part-time or reduced hours. Without really planning to we kinda rewired how our family runs… again.

Anthony’s new job has him traveling all over the Portland area and working different hours week to week. While the money is about the same as his old job (for now) the benefits are better and he has great advancement prospects. But it also requires him to dress up like a grownup; suits and business casual. No more jeans and sandals with socks for Anthony.. well at least not on a work day.

Each morning now Joshua or Anthony (depending on schedule) drives Jayme up the hill to the school bus and after school Jayme heads to day care.

Putting Jayme in a mainstream daycare has been something we have been VERY nervous about. Jayme is still working on learning some of the interaction skills that kids his age use and when he get confused or upset he tends to blow his top. So we were quite nervous about daycare. We spoke with all of Jayme’s teachers and therpists in length and they all said “Let’s try and see what happens.” Not the comforting words one might want to hear, but truthful ones none the less.

Anthony did a tour of the day care and met with the staff. They all seemed to be on the level and well skilled. So that afternoon Anthony and Jayme did a drive by of the day care so Jayme could see the day care from afar. The following day Anthony and Jayme stopped by for a short visit. Jayme got to meet the staff, the kids and tour the day care. He seemed pretty ok and the staff interactions with him were very positive. The very next day we did a dry run and Jayme did a 2 hour visit alone and did great.

As of this blog we are a week into daycare and no issue to report yet. He seems to really like the daycare and while he can not name any of his new friends, he does state he has made some new ones.

2013 ELECTION

On a funny note, we should mention that we are a few days out from the 2012 elections. Our family has watched each of the Presidential debates and we have tried to express the importance of voting and being politically informed to Jayme. Even let him help with our mail in ballots. The funny thing is Jayme made his mind up on who his Presidential choice was without any help from us. Jayme is an Obama supporter. He watched most of the first debate with us and half way through decided that Romney was a bully and was not using his manners and “he should get in trouble for that”. Since that night he has been very vocal about his support for the President, even getting into a debate with his bus driver telling her all about how great Obama is. Out of the mouths of babes…