Typical American Thanksgiving-NOT!

Well, actually, I did have one typical American Thanksgiving celebration. My Thanksgiving day was filled with aunts, cousins and family friends, all stuffing themselves into oblivion, getting drunk and saying things they probably shouldn't in mixed company. It was nice. It was fun. And I ate enough carrot cake to kill a horse. Just your typical Thanksgiving for the Wise (Young) Mommy.

However, Sunday was the day that we got to go celebrate Thanksgiving with my husband's ex (otherwise known as my son's mother) and her family.

Confused yet?

I don't blame you, although if you had been keeping up with my blog (which, of course, you should be), you would know that my son did not actually come out of my vagina, but another woman's, whom we will call Andrea to protect her identity. And although the first few years of mine and my husband's relationship was tumultuous and volatile because of Andrea and her need for making our lives living hell and using her son as leverage to get us to do what she wanted, we now all get along like one big happy family. Well, one big unusually dysfunctional family.

We got custody of Big Boy about four and a half years ago, and since then, Andrea has begun to like me. As in, she likes me more than she likes my husband and wants to HANG OUT WITH ME. At first, to me, this was HORRIFYING. The last thing I wanted to do was hang out with my husband's ex, and if that isn't awkward enough, you throw in the fact that Big Boy treats me more like his mother than her. The thought of having her son asking me whether he could have some candy or some other mom question in front of her made me cringe. Can you say awkward? Yes, I thought so too. So I resisted. I dragged my feet. Well, basically I told my husband "HA, yeah right, when hell freezes over, ya-da, ya-da, ya-da, will I ever succumb to this request and merge our families in celebration."

But eventually time faded the memories of the old days when she would do such things as sneak into his apartment and clean the toilet bowl with my toothbrush and replace my shampoo with Nair, or the night that she threw a cordless telephone at me at 3 a.m. and broke my toe. Ok, well, they haven't faded that much. But they don't quite send the shiver through me that they used to. So I agreed to start going to functions with her family.

And it's not so bad really. At first it was a bit strange, but now they treat me like a member of the family (although Andrea's father regularly hits on me and stares at my boobs, which I am pretty sure he doesn't do with the rest of his family). So when my husband told me last week that we would be going to Andrea's father's house for their Thanksgiving celebration on Sunday, I accepted it willingly, and began planning my wardrobe to show the least amount of cleavage as possible to avoid uncomfortable conversations with her dad.

So my Sunday was spent with my husband, my daughter, my son, my son's mother, my son's stepsister, and my son's mother's entire entourage of family and friends. The one really great perk was that one of her family friends was a guy that I can only describe as "eye candy." I now have proof that my little one is truly her mother's daughter because after batting her eyelashes and doing her "I'm so adorable you can't even stand me" act, he proceeded to pull her onto his lap and I swear I saw her wink at me. Little minx.

But really, the highlight of the day was when my stepson got jabbed in the groin in some tragic childhood wrestling accident. He rolled on the floor, clutching his little pee-pee, and yelled out "Oh man, my NUTS!!"

In full mommy mode, I yelled out (at the exact same time as his mother) "Watch your mouth!"

Everyone got real quiet and looked from her to me and then to Big Boy. And he, in classic Big Boy form with perfect comedic timing, said "It's so much more annoying when you have both your moms saying it to you at the same time."

He gets his humor from me, I think.

It's nurture, not nature, mo-fos.