Etiquette

John has been attending an etiquette class after school for the last month or so.  I threatened to send him last year but he begged and plead and promised radical things (like to eat with a fork and wipe his mouth on a napkin) so, against my better judgment, I held off and hoped for improvement.  I will give him credit for having beautiful manners when speaking with adults and saying things like please and thank you, but the whole suppertime thing just gets worse as the days go by.  The night before the first class Honey and I reminded him that he would be attending and it was undeniably the worst tantrum I’ve seen since age three.  If you are imagining a seven year old writhing around on the kitchen floor with a flood of tears and gasps of “please, pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease, don’t doooooooooooo this to mmmeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee” then you are spot on.  It was ugly. 

I arrived super early to retrieve him from the first class so that the didn’t have to bear one second more of the torture than absolutely necessary.  So, imagine my supreme delight when he came bounding out with the biggest grin on his face and exclaimed “I LOVE IT!!!  Manners are SO much FUN, Mommy.”  And so it went each week as he learned about making introductions, phone etiquette, table manners and the likes!! 

The class culminated tonight with a fancy dinner at a local restaurant.  Only the littles were allowed to attend this four course extravaganza, but y’all know I couldn’t resist peeking through the plants to see what on earth was transpiring (we hung out with the baby in a different part of the restaurant).  It was positively darling to spy on their polite conversations and to witness their grown up manners.



After the dinner and as John’s teacher was gushing about what a star pupil he was,  it was like slow motion as a sudden look of horror spread across her face.  Wouldn’t you know the baby chose that precise moment to throw his head back and literally pour salt into his mouth straight from the shaker?!?!  It was all I could do to hold in snorts of laughter.  We went ahead and reserved his spot for 2016.  (As if this incident two years ago wasn’t enough to ensure his attendance.)



With that, I’m off to bed.  I thought about starting on the mounds of laundry that make it look like fourteen people live here.  But it’ll be here tomorrow.
xoxo