My Dinner Rules

So, as you may have gathered from a few posts so far this year, I am changing up a few things in my world.
I like to share them with you.
Some are silly little adjustments to things that bug me, and some are big t'ings, that I hope will improve the shape of our little family longer term.

One of the big ones so far has been this dining table.
It belongs to my Nanny.
It has been a part of my childhood memories for my whole life and I really feel that a dining tabel so often is where the memories are made and the stories unfold.

So..... we pretty much, up to the arrival of this table, ate like gypsies.
We had big day beds and a huge coffee table in our sunroom, as well as a small dining table which I use as a study desk. Also a couch/kid stool/coffee table situation in the lounge room and a bench/stool sitch in the kitchen. And an outdoor table on the deck. Plenty of options.

When we got the table, I was so excited at the grown-upedness of it.

But what I learned in the first few nights was that it aint all about the dinner parties.

Oh no.

What I noticed was that there were so many skills attatched to eating at a didning table that quite frankly, for all the attributes of our socially well-adjusted children, they sucked big time at good old fashioned family tea time.

1. Their cutlery skills were appalling. Miss 8, not too bad, Mr 6 ate like a cat with chopsticks.
2. The Give-Way rule of dinner conversation had been failed dissmally by our family O'four. Car. Crash.
3. The sit the hell down and dont get up rule of fairytale dinner times was a pipe dream of other worldliness.
4. The dont eat too fast/too slow and wait til everyone is finished ideal were UNHEARD OF.

I am stoked that a few weeks down the track, we are eating like more accomplished cats, with a pre set tabel requiring less jack in the box action, less car crash conversation and an unspoken, agreed upon pace of consumption.

In fact, the stuff of my imagination for family dinners around a dining table with chatter and manners and the creating of lovely memories, is slowly and wonderously unfolding.