I should explain the title of this blog. I’ve been meaning to start blogging for almost two years now. I believe I made sufficiently clear in my last post that I am not a planner. Did I also mention I am not an action taker? My thoughts are like light particles, traveling over eons to shed illumination on the earth. Eons. This is all to say that it should be no surprise that a blog of which I conceived two years ago has just now been born. But it does make that catchy title perhaps a little less keen than before.
You see, two years ago we were dining with squirrels. Every meal Karl and I sat down to was, as any of you with small children can imagine, nutty-pants.
First of all, neither of the kids could stay in their seats. My mother once responded to my complaints about this mealtime particular with something along the lines of “serves you right.” And indeed I do have a vivid memory of leaping up from the table to do a cheer because I had to do a cheer.
Secondly, our dinner table conversation had at this time consisted almost entirely of endless games of Guess the Animal in which Ben would pick a suspicious iteration of animal along the lines of the “black-bellied asiatic salmon” or the “african mongol snow leopard” and we would spend the rest of the meal guessing fruitlessly. Lucy invariably forgot the animal she’d picked and cheerfully agreed with any question you asked until you felt quite mad, trying to imagine what animal could walk, fly, swim, had wings, lived in the desert, could be found in Michigan, was as big as a toaster and could eat people. Crazy-making. Like squirrels in your brain, for example.
And then there was the constant call for table manners. I have such distinct memories of my mother enjoining us to keep our elbows off the table, to put our napkins in our laps, to chew with our mouths closed. I wonder now how she kept at it all those years. Ben’s unwillingness to engage a utensil led to the family joke that goes like this:
Sara, picking up fork and holding it to Ben’s face: “Hey, Ben, look! This is a fork!”
Ben:Â ha ha mom.
This last part said, of course, with mouth full.
So one night, I looked into the eyes of my husband, to whom I had said no more that evening than “is an Andean mountain goat a vegetarian or no?”, and said, soulfully, “Squirrels. We are dining with squirrels.”
The birth of a blog, people.
Of course things have calmed down quite a bit around here. We’ve graduated to introductory conversation skills, mining every detail of their school day. Ben and Lucy manage to stay in their seats most of the time.  And every once in a while, Ben uses a fork. So it’s more like dining with partially trained monkeys. Small chimpanzees, say, taken only last year from their mothers and brought to a mid-sized city zoo, where they are being lovingly trained by a devoted primatologist in the hopes that one day they’ll be a part of the zoo’s wildly-popular Furry Friends show.
Or be invited to a friend’s house for dinner and make their mother proud.
10 Comments
We’ve resorted to tying Nadia to the bench at the dinner table with a belt. Still doesn’t work very well.
If mealtime is becoming to civilized, just have Barb over for dinner. That should be squirrel-like. A 30-lb drooling squirrel with a crazy-tail.
I will fall asleep with a smile on my face and a chuckle in my heart. What a delightful glimpse into your family, and clear evidence that you are surviving their both being in school.
You’re a good writer, girl. Keep at it!
Are you contacting people about blog updates as Karl does? I just happened to check yours from the sidebar on his, before I went upstairs.
Looking forward to the next installment.
Love you – Mom
I’m going to look into email notification plugins for this blogging tool and will sign you up when I find one and install it. In the meantime, you can subscribe to the RSS feed. 😉
Ha! I totally called it! Did you read my second comment from last week’s entry? In spite of the mind-numbing effects of dining with said squirrels, I am looking forward to the day when Dash and his yet-to-be-conceived sibling(s)are old enough to sit round the table and engage in all this yummy madness…REMIND ME OF THIS STATEMENT IN A FEW YEARS!
Love the blog and the mama squirrel so much…
Nicole
The picture of Ben, fork aloft, with a look of amused tolerance (toward his parents) on his face is just perfect. How about a caption contest?
Oh, Sara, your children HAVE made you proud. Unlimited hot dogs may be the key, but their table manners at my house are lovely.
In fact, one time Ben asked me what I would be serving them for dinner. When I said hotdogs (left out the green beans for effect) he ran across the living room to get right up into my face and say earnestly, “don’t tease me about this, Auntie Tash, are there really hot dogs?” I believe my affirmative answer got me an unsolicited hug.
Hey, an auntie’s gotta do, what an auntie’s gotta do. At least the hotdogs are nitrate-free 🙂
So glad to hear that I am not alone! Last week in addition to watching Dylan eat noodles with his fingers, we got to be serenaded by armpit farts; his latest discovery. I wish we could be so concerned about elbows on the table! This too shall pass, right? Love the blog! A great way to keep up on the happenings of the family!
Very funny, Sara. I wonder if it runs true with other boy first girl second families that the boy is so highly specific about interests (animal you must guess) and the girl just goes along her own happy path (anything goes so long as we are happy). It certainly does with my two. We play I Spy whenever we go to our favorite family restaurant (Noodles). Willem will invariably want you to guess the blue stripe on the belt of his action figure that happens to be clutched in his fist. And Hannah has only recently stuck to an actual thing that she sees and wants you to guess; before, she’d says yes to the first thing you’d say or change her mind if you guessed too quickly. Also, in the world of teaching table manners, it will never end: we were at dinner with teenage nephew and his mother had to get on his case about eating the food over his plate so as not to drop food on floor — our battle of the moment. Keep this up, Sara! (the teaching of table manner and the blog)
sara!
HOORAY!! for the birth of your blog! i’m so excited to read…
love that quote at the end of your first post. i have it on a green card, in your handwriting, up in my room at all times.
You write very well.
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