Who Knew?

Thanksgiving weekend is a time to spend with family. A time of togetherness. A time to make memories you'll always treasure.

Unless, of course, you have to entertain a 19-month-old. In that case, it's four days of dread, wondering if you'll have the creativity and energy to think of ways to keep Mr. No-Short-Term-Memory entertained.

Whew. It went fine. We only needed the finger paints once, and that was really about Brian, not Iain.

Yesterday, though: dicey. Not because of Iain but because Charles and I are such geeks.

Here's the thing: we do not follow college football. Yes, I know. We live in a college town with the state's flagship school and people in KY are sports-mad. I do not deny any of this. And yet, we are people untouched by the madness. In spring, I am usually invited to join a basketball pool, but only because my pathetic ignorance of the game amuses the others. Also, they need my $5, and they know I won't win.

But to return to the point, we don't follow football. So yesterday, when we pulled into the Arboretum (directly across a 2-lane street from the stadium) at 4pm to take a walk with Iain, we didn't think the 6 o'clock game against Tennessee (Kentucky's arch-rival in football) would be a problem.

Foolish, foolish geeks. At 5:02, we began to exit the Arboretum. At 5:50, we'd traveled a quarter mile, maybe. At 6:20, we finally made it near to home, Iain asleep in the backseat, Mom and Dad thoroughly frazzled. In between those times our lives were a sea of orange, blue, and beer cases. At one point, we told a traffic cop "We're not going to the game, we just walked our kid in the Arboretum and want to get out of this!" People in the next car laughed. Laughed.

One bright spot came from the madness, though. At 6:20, having missed Iain's dinnertime and bathtime and being (as we were) hard on the boundaries of his bedtime, I said, "let's just get Chik-fil-A." Charles is not the kind of man to say no to that (who would? Chik-fil-A is God's gift to mankind in the form of spicy chicken, as everyone knows.).

So we got a couple of sandwiches and - because we're terrible people who feed their child junk- a little box of nuggets for Iain to try. He doesn't eat meat, so I secretly figured they would be mine (MINE!).

Lo and behold, miracle of miracles, he ate a nugget. And then another. He ate 4 whole nuggets!!! And I saved the rest to see if the experiment was, as the scientists say, replicable. Yes! Today at lunch he ate four more nuggets. Ok, fine. He ate three because Mommy poached a nugget. You made me confess.

Tonight we agreed to try it again this week. I'm going to make nuggets and find out whether he'll eat home-made. If not, we might become regulars at Chik-fil-A. Really.