The beginning of the holidays

The day after Thanksgiving it snowed. Not that it blanketed the city, but the snowflakes were wet and big, and they fell throughout the day. There was a wintry pall overcasting the day, but it lifted our spirits because it was the holidays. We went to the new upscale shopping area in Albuquerque with Janey and two of her daughters. First we stopped off at a jewelry store just to peek. The daughters went around to shop in the outdoor mall, while Janey, Cyndi, the boys and I went inside to an Italian restaurant. We got a large table in a large sideroom, next to both a servers' station but also next to large French doors that looked out onto a patio and the street of the mall. I ordered the cheapest bottle of wine on the menu (a Paso Robles cabernet for $20, but still a bargain). We ordered an appetizer of bruschetta and hot chocolate for the boys. Bread came, Jack and Ry colored on the butcher block paper that covered our table, and Janey, Cyndi and I drank our wine and watched the snow come down.

We decided to share threeways a wonderful salad and a panino, and we each ordered a small bowl of tomato bisque. The service was thankfully unhurried and otherwise very accommodating. We talked about something. Janey's daughters arrived, gobbled some bruschetta down, but declared they were "too full" from breakfast to eat with us and would order their dinners "to go" so they could eat them later wherever they ended up. The salad came and went, and then the soups. Janey's daughters ordered more bread, and I think they ended up tasting their mother's supper. I thought we should have another bottle of wine, no one objected, and the second bottle was served just before the sandwiches arrived. By this time, the snow was heavier and the boys became restless. They ran some laps around the circular table. Thankfully, there were only a few diners left in the entire restaurant, mostly families with older children, lingering over their post-turkey-meal meal, and the only other people in our side room were some staff celebrating a manager's birthday in the opposite corner. The waiter brought gold balloons for the boys, and then our tab.

After dinner, Janey and Cyndi went shopping and bought some shoes or something else. Janey's daughters went off on their own to be joined later by Janey for another shopping errand to be completed before they left town. The boys and I just walked around the streets of the outdoor mall, listening to the Christmas music that came from the outdoor speakers hidden in the lampposts or the rocks and walls that landscaped the sidewalks. We ducked into a Williams Sonoma and an Apple store. I bought a small (tall) Americano from the Starbucks, and Jackson got a plastic card for his new wallet. Despite the weather and because of the day, there was a crowd of people in the stores, though not so much on the sidewalks. Cyndi cell phoned me to meet me at another clothing shop, the one with the chic dresses and leather jackets, and along the way the boys and I found the only vending cart opened on the street. The cart was full of little wind-up toys, and the vendor helped the boys play with any of the toys they wanted to see. We picked two for about the price of a glass of wine (or 30 miles of gas) and met Cyndi.

Poor Ry's hands were cold—his mitttens were too large—so we bought two pairs of gloves for the price of one with an additional discount. And it was there that we discovered that Albuquerque now had its own Anthropologie store just down the street. So we had to look. Sure enough, there was a sweater jacket beckoning Cyndi. Jackson was playing with some expensive decorative hour glasses. A sweet employee came up to Ry to comment on his Spider Man cap as I was getting his fingers into the new gloves when I heard the sound of breaking glass. Jackson came running to me in tears and buried his head into my shoulder. The sweet employee said to Jackson, "Friend, don't be upset. I just broke some glasses this morning." And she gave Jack & Ry each a candy cane. Later, as we left the store, Jackson walked over to the sweet employee and said, "Thank you."

That's pretty much the story of that day. Janey and her daughters didn't leave town, afterall, and stayed with us that night. Later in the weekend, we got all the Christmas decorations out and slowly have been putting some up. The boys are very excited. The train is up, the tree and lights but not the ornaments, the village, the mantle.

Jackson is having growing pains and is often hungry. He is becoming tall and can stand in the pool. (He's mastered floating.) He is very excited this week because his kindergarten class will be moving into the new classroom. He has been showing more gentleness with Rylee, and the two of them are learning to share and cooperate. They take turns opening the back door whenever they return from a car trip, and they figure out whose turn it is remarkably amiably. I told Jackson that this is something Rylee is teaching him while he teaches Rylee about the world.

On Thanksgiving Day, I was playing chess with Nicholas. Nicholas had just learned from Don, who sat nearby and watched the game. Nicholas knows a lot already and gets his pieces out early. He'll recite some very good rules of thumb that Don taught him. Occasionally, I'd ask Nicholas if he was sure about a particular move. Jackson came over and began helping Nicholas in a very easy manner, quickly suggesting moves. Jackson gets frustrated whenever we play and he eventually loses his queen, but more and more he sees the board and this was a good opportunity to see the game from a slightly different perspective. Brendon joined us, too, and eventually he took my spot. I think I saw Juliette join the game at some point, too. I'm not sure the game actually ended in any checkmate by the time dinner was ready.

Rylee and I have been suffering some sort of bug. Poor Ry's voice was hoarse yesterday, and he's having trouble breathing at night. Jackson has a favorite show at the moment that both of the boys watch together. We have recorded some episodes that they watch over and over. It is about phonics and reading, and Rylee is picking some of it up. Ry is definitely counting. By rote, he counts past twelve, and he easily counts any set of three objects. He's learning colors and uses noun combinations and increasingly more complex sentences. He loves possessives and words describing motion and direction. This morning I swear he was looking at each one of his toes. I thought he was counting, but I heard him say, "Mommy, Daddy, Jackson, Dorrie…."

Ariel had a birthday on Saturday. She and Chris had Thanksgiving dinner together in Fairbanks on Thursday and were going up to a hot springs resort on her birthday. I think she said it had been too warm to go before, which I took to mean that it was easier to deal with the usual ice than the occasional slush.

My parents leave tomorrow for a trip to Hawaii. They'll be on the cruise with Jennifer. David and Sandra, I gather, are somewhere north of Miami and will shoot across to the Bahamas sometime from now.