Every Thanksgiving Is Different

Yesterday marked the first Thanksgiving we've spent in Ohio since 2006, and the first under our own roof since 2008. It was lovely spending the holiday with family -- this year, with Paul's -- but even when we were away from home we made sure to do something special to mark the occasion. Often that meant vacation.

Often, but not always. Here's how we spent Thanksgiving in the New York years.

2012: Hospital. Edith was born shortly before noon the day before, and I barely left the bed. We watched part of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade on TV in my hospital room. By far the most exciting Thanksgiving we've ever had!

2011: Boston. We left Brooklyn on Thanksgiving morning and walked around Cambridge before checking into our hotel and eating a Malaysian meal for our Thanksgiving supper.

2010: Argentina & Uruguay. We spent Thanksgiving week in Buenos Aires and got tickets this day to cross the Rio de la Plata to Colonia, Uruguay, a quaint town just a short boat ride away and a perfect day trip. It's the only Thanksgiving I've spent in two countries. No turkey on this Thanksgiving either: We had dinner at a Peruvian restaurant.

2009: Japan. The morning was spent in Tokyo, followed by a bullet train ride to Kyoto. In the city, we visited Fushimi Inari-taisya Shrine, climbed hundreds of steps up and through the famous orange gates and watched the sun set below some hills beyond Kyoto. That night we ate eel and rice in Gion.

2008: Brooklyn. We stayed in the entire holiday, but the night before we went to the Upper West Side to see the inflated balloons ready for the next day's parade. Cold and crowded. Not as much fun as the parade itself, but I'm glad we saw it.

2007: Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade! We had moved to New York just the month before, and I hesitated about whether to go to the parade. I'd wanted to see it in person since I was small, but the practical side of me said it would be too cold and crowded. We went anyway and were rewarded with temperatures in the 60s. It was a terrific experience, and one I'll never forget. After the parade I remember how happy I was that I lived in such a great city.

What will the next Thanksgivings bring? Who knows? But they have a lot to live up to.

Edith's First Week

I won't be able to resist posting photos of Edith in this space, of course, although I'm not planning on turning this into a full-time baby blog.

However, my life right now revolves around milk, poop and sleep, so expect a higher proportion of baby-related posts over the coming weeks.

The following photos show some of the highlights of Edith's first week!

Edith's first day.

A Thanksgiving meal in the hospital ... and a baby!

Being dressed in the hospital in the traditional Erwin going-home outfit.

Dressed and ready to go home!

Being adorable.

Paul reads Edith his favorite book as a kid: "Paul the Pitcher."

Edith's first stroller ride, on the way to her first appointment with her pediatrician.

The next two photos are for my mom. She hates that I scanned a photo years ago of her holding me, only a few hours old. Now I have one of my own.

Mom and me, 1981.

Me and Edith, 2012.

So Much to Be Thankful For

Tomorrow's Thanksgiving; as usual, I have a lot to be thankful for. Even more so this year.

I've been trying to write and schedule these blog posts about a week before they are actually published -- it's actually the morning of Friday, Nov. 16, as I write this -- so maybe Edith has been born by now. Or maybe not: she's due on Thanksgiving Day itself. Either way, I'm thankful for a healthy, drama-free pregnancy (though perhaps not the morning sickness that came with it). I hope the birth is the same.

I'm thankful for a husband who is just as excited as I am and who has already read Edith a story every night for the last 10 weeks. And I'm thankful for all of the family members who plan to share our joy by coming to help and visit in December.

But I'm also thankful for the family and friends in Ohio and elsewhere who have checked up on Paul and me and simply kept us in their thoughts. We're lucky to know all of them.

Lastly, I'm thankful that the hormones that make me write weepy, sentimental blog posts like this will soon be out of my system. Maybe in six weeks I'll be back to normal.

Whether or not Edith is here, there will be no blog post on Friday since it's the day after Thanksgiving. And since, as I mentioned, I'm staying ahead on blog posts, a non-baby-related post on Monday and any day after doesn't mean she's not here! Paul and I will be posting the arrival on all the usual spots when we can -- and/or want to!

Walking Boston's Freedom Trail

Old North Church

Boston is by far the most historic U.S. city I have every visited, and I wonder if it's the most historic U.S. city, period. Sure, there's Jamestown and Richmond and Gettysburg, and perhaps you could make a case for Savannah or St. Augustine. But visiting Boston was like walking into my elementary school social studies textbooks. Never have I seen so many historic buildings and sites in a single afternoon.

And it was so easy! The major stops are all along the Freedom Trail, a 2.5 mile path marked by a thick red line along the sidewalks and crosswalks. It starts at Boston Common (conveniently just a few blocks from the hotel where we stayed) and ends across a bridge in Charlestown, with a visit to the USS Constitution and Bunker Hill.

I had a map of the Freedom Trail in my pocket, and we even downloaded a Freedom Trail app onto our phones, but neither was absolutely necessary, and both were rarely used. The red marker on the ground was easy to see and follow, and the sites had clear markers explaining their historical significance. The trail does, however have a nice website if you want to learn about the sites before you visit. I'll cover some of the highlights below.

The Massachusetts State House was difficult to miss with its gleaming gold dome. Unfortunately it seemed to be closed for the long holiday weekend, so we didn't get to go inside.

The nearby Granary Burying Ground was beautiful in the morning sun. The cemetery was small, but lots of tourists wandered the trails, stopping especially to see the stones for Paul Revere and Samuel Adams.

Paul Revere's stones

Faneuil Hall was the site of many important meetings (Sugar Act and Stamp Act protests, for example), but now the area seems to draw crowds for the nearby Quincy Market restaurants and stores. The crowds certainly were thick on Black Friday, but I managed to find a Christmas ornament and try a cup of Boston clam chowder.

Also, statues.

We also saw Paul Revere's house, but more interesting was the Old North Church and its famous (though rebuilt) steeple. "One if by land, two if by sea," anyone? The inside of the Episcopal church was nearly as interesting. The pews were arranged in boxes surrounded by shoulder-high white walls to keep out the drafts.

Paul and I both agreed that the Old North Church was our favorite stop of the trip. The Charlestown section of the Freedom Trail was a close second for me. More about that on Friday.

Boston for Thanksgiving

Boston Common

Instead of stuffing myself with turkey and cranberry sauce, my Thanksgiving platter consisted of Malaysian pad thai and a lychee drink. No, Paul and I weren't in Asia, but we also weren't in New York. Instead, we spent the holiday weekend in Boston.

In particular, we spent the evening of Thanksgiving in Boston's Chinatown, one of the few places we knew would have a nice selection of restaurants open when the rest of the city had shut down. After the sun had set, we stumbled out of the cold and into a lovely Malaysian restaurant. We had already had a full day. We left our apartment at 10 a.m. (so I even got to watch the first hour of the Macy's parade at home!) and headed straight for Cambridge, arriving at 2:30 p.m.

There weren't many restaurants open, and even fewer stores (none that I could see), but there were plenty of people on the sidewalk taking in the Harvard views and filling up the few food establishments that were open. We took a look around and grabbed lunch, heading back to our car and finally to Boston proper when the cold got to be too much.

The main thing I wanted to do in Boston was walk the Freedom Trail, but it was far too dark and deserted to do that by the time we checked in Thursday afternoon. (I'll be writing more about the Freedom Trail on this blog on Wednesday and Friday.) In fact, the only other thing we managed to see Thursday was Chinatown. But on Friday and Saturday we fit in a few sites aside from the historical.

Friday evening we went to the Bull & Finch Pub, the model for "Cheers," which then remodeled parts of its own building to better resemble the TV show. We ordered drinks and a big plate of cheesy fries at the upstairs replica bar. Paul got Frasier's corner stool.

The next morning we started the day with a Samuel Adams Brewery Tour. It was 10 a.m., but the tour still had a good 30 people on it -- it's 5 o'clock somewhere, and the free drinks at the end were cheerily sampled.

A "party trolley" runs every 15 minutes between the brewery and Doyle's, a local bar that was the first to sell Sam Adams. The inside of the trolley had benches along the windows, two poles, lights and a fog machine (neither in use) and a small deck in the back. Since we watched Ohio State get beaten up by Michigan at the bar, the trolley was the last jolly thing we experienced for a while.

Traveling anywhere in the Northeast in November is a gamble -- it could be snowy or sunny or both. It was cold on Thanksgiving itself, but the skies were bright and warm, near 60, on both Friday and Saturday. We got the best of both worlds: warm weather and holiday decorations.

Boston

Cambridge

Happy Thanksgiving!

Bay Ridge, along New York Harbor

Since Pay a Visit won't resume until Monday, you have extra time to add a comment to this post. And in keeping with the spirit of the Thanksgiving holiday, why not make it about what you're thankful for?

I'll start.

I'm thankful for small-town scenes in a big-city setting, things that remind me of home even with big bridges and bodies of water in the background.

Near the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge

Another Thanksgiving in New York

Happy Thanksgiving!

Last year on this day I fulfilled a lifelong dream by attending the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. But unlike last year, which was a freakishly warm 70 degrees, today was about 40 degrees colder. So instead I watched the parade from the comfort of my own couch.

That's OK, because Paul and I got our fill of the parade last night. The gigantic balloons are inflated the night before Thanksgiving and netted down on a couple of side streets just west of Central Park. Not knowing what to expect, we went to see for ourselves.

The experience actually was more of a hassle than attending the parade itself. The crowds were as thick as cranberry sauce, and the line to reach even the first balloon stretched several blocks. But once you reached them it was fun seeing the balloons at eye-level, if you can say that about something that's three stories tall.

All in all, we spent about two hours in line and seeing the balloons-- nearly as long as we were at the parade itself last year. My advice? Watch the real thing and go to the parade.

Thanksgiving in the city

The first thing I was thankful for Thursday morning was a beautiful, sunny day. The temperature reached into the 60s-- perfect weather to watch my first Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in person.

I had planned to bundle up in about four layers of clothing. Instead I wore a long-sleeve shirt and a fall jacket. It felt even warmer outside because of the crowds.

The parade's Web site said we may want to get there as early as 6:30 a.m. to get a good view. No thanks. We got there at 8:15, 45 minutes before the parade started, and contended with only about four rows of people in front of us. Paul and I are tall, so that hardly mattered. Not long after we got there, the major crowds began to arrived and it appeared to be difficult to even move down the sidewalks.

We were at about the midway point of the parade, at 50th and Broadway. That's about 16 blocks from Macy's, where all the performances were. I couldn't help but notice that we were surrounded by symbols of New York and Ohio:

a Duane Reade pharmacy across the street ...

and an Applebee's to our right.

The parade got to us at 9:30. The parade featured a few semi-celebrities: Good Charlotte, Dolly Parton, Lifehouse, Wynonna Judd, Menudo and I think a few people from High School Musical. Of course there were several high school bands from around the country, and I couldn't help but recall how jealous I was when the Defiance High School band were invited to perform years back.

The helium balloons looks even larger in person than they do on TV. It sometimes felt like they were right on top of us. When any of them veers toward the sidewalk, the entire crowd cried, "Whooo!" in unison.

The parade ends at noon on TV but was done at 11:30 where we were. Then everyone crowded onto Broadway to take pictures and maybe catch a last glimpse of the parade as it winded south. It was strange to be standing in the middle of such a normally-busy throroughfare.

I wanted to take advantage of the sun, so we headed to Central Park a few blocks away, and we weren't the only ones. The park was completely filled with kids on the playgrounds and families (including us) climbing the huge rocks near the southern edge. Paul found out last night on the Internet that there are books dedicated to bouldering in Central Park, the rocks are that big.

The ice rink was busy as well, and Christmas music drifted into the air. Then we walked down Fifth Avenue, peering at a few of the holiday window decorations.

We cooked a traditional Thanksgiving dinner-for-two that night, but the day was certainly not like any holiday I'd ever experienced before. Unfortunately the warm weather didn't last long-- it's back to hats and gloves today.