Miss Manners
Today my friend Caroline came by for lunch. She lives in San Jose but was in town last night to celebrate a friend's birthday; and since I work at home on Fridays, it turned out to be convenient for her to come by so we could have lunch. Devon, Caroline and I all went to King of Thai, a restaurant right around the corner on Clement Street. I don't know if Devon is getting more comfortable in restaurants or whether this was a fluke, but she was really great in the restaurant.
Our friends Keri and Arne are great about bringing books and toys to restaurants, but I always forget; so as a consequence we generally play with whatever is on the table (in this case chopsticks and plastic soup spoons). Devon played with her chopsticks and only dropped them on the floor a couple of times (this is nothing, relatively speaking); then when the food came she really dug in and ate. Most of this is fairly common, but after she's finished eating is when things usually fall apart -- she gets bored (but the adults aren't done eating) and wants to get down, run around and generally terrorize the restaurant. This time, for whatever reason, she was content to sit in the chair, play with the chopsticks occasionally and let us eat in peace. She had been to the playground earlier, so that might have tired her out. Caroline kept commenting about how well mannered she was, and I didn't want to break the illusion by telling her that this is not the usual behavior. I can only hope that we'll move towards this more regularly, though.
It all did fall apart at the end of the day, though, when we went to Whole Foods and she had a full tantrum. She was screaming so loudly that we were actually packing up to go home (without having ever gotten into the store), when Walt had the great idea of trying to get her something to eat. We made a beeline for juice and she drank almost all of a pint carrot juice; and after that, all was well. We generally don't give her juice, so perhaps the novelty of it was arresting too. After the juice, and with the bottle to occupy her in the store (putting it in the car, arranging it, taking it out for a drink, etc.), we managed to get through in pretty good time with no other incidents.
My book club is coming on Tuesday night, which is the first night in quite a while that I've been able to host. The place is still a total mess -- there are boxes in every room, and until the cabinets are finished in the kitchen, we really can't unpack most of the boxes anyway (since I'd say about 1/4 of all of our boxes are kitchen equipment). But we have the table in, and aside from the fan, everything in the kitchen is operational. I think the rest of the members are probably just going to be happy to stop hosting and let me do some work for a change.
Our friends Keri and Arne are great about bringing books and toys to restaurants, but I always forget; so as a consequence we generally play with whatever is on the table (in this case chopsticks and plastic soup spoons). Devon played with her chopsticks and only dropped them on the floor a couple of times (this is nothing, relatively speaking); then when the food came she really dug in and ate. Most of this is fairly common, but after she's finished eating is when things usually fall apart -- she gets bored (but the adults aren't done eating) and wants to get down, run around and generally terrorize the restaurant. This time, for whatever reason, she was content to sit in the chair, play with the chopsticks occasionally and let us eat in peace. She had been to the playground earlier, so that might have tired her out. Caroline kept commenting about how well mannered she was, and I didn't want to break the illusion by telling her that this is not the usual behavior. I can only hope that we'll move towards this more regularly, though.
It all did fall apart at the end of the day, though, when we went to Whole Foods and she had a full tantrum. She was screaming so loudly that we were actually packing up to go home (without having ever gotten into the store), when Walt had the great idea of trying to get her something to eat. We made a beeline for juice and she drank almost all of a pint carrot juice; and after that, all was well. We generally don't give her juice, so perhaps the novelty of it was arresting too. After the juice, and with the bottle to occupy her in the store (putting it in the car, arranging it, taking it out for a drink, etc.), we managed to get through in pretty good time with no other incidents.
My book club is coming on Tuesday night, which is the first night in quite a while that I've been able to host. The place is still a total mess -- there are boxes in every room, and until the cabinets are finished in the kitchen, we really can't unpack most of the boxes anyway (since I'd say about 1/4 of all of our boxes are kitchen equipment). But we have the table in, and aside from the fan, everything in the kitchen is operational. I think the rest of the members are probably just going to be happy to stop hosting and let me do some work for a change.
posted by Devon Szalva at
10:17 PM
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