Dinner time pleasantries

Family dinners together are of course the stuff "happy childhood" legends are made of. Everyone sitting serenely around the table, forks/knives clinking along with gentle laugher and engaging stories.

We absolutely adhere to family dinners every night but have found it's really exhausting to have a pleasant relaxing dinner. After our "pleasant and relaxing" dinner I'm checking my watch for how soon I can reasonably start bedtime.

For one, Amelia has always been extremely tough to get specific information out of, so we built coping mechanisms a long time ago. For a while it was a deal where we each told each other the 3 most interesting or funny or odd things that happened that day. This is in fact how I discovered she had started reading - she told me she figured out how to read as her #3 one random day.

Now we (yes, this is incredibly cheesy) do what the Obama family does after reading it in an article about his family that I read to the kids around electon time - "Roses and Thorns." At dinner everyone shares their roses (good things) for the day and thorns (bad thing). This type of formulaic approach really suits Amelia as otherwise her mind goes in a million different directions and you get a sentence like this that makes you want to stab yourself in the thigh with your fork:

"Well, today I did - well actually it was like something from yesterday - or it could have been the day before yesterday because I think we had Show and Tell - and did I bring my mask back? - Oh yeah! Of course I did because I was telling Oliver - but my interesting thing - I think it was yesterday because we had ICT and when we do that some of the class goes to ICT like Lucy, Sophie, George, and Henry except this time not Henry because he was home sick today and ...."

Meanwhile the entire time she's talking in a normal tone and Oliver is, at the top of his ample lungs, while stuffing food in his mouth, going:

"Today I - Today I - Today I - TODAY I DID SOMETHING REALLY INTERESTING!!!! MAMA! LISTEN TO ME!! MISS AMELIA STOP TALKING! TODAY I - TODAY I - TODAY WAS THE DAY..."

And I am saying "Oliver, please don't interrupt your sister. OLIVER please give her a minute. Amelia, could you speed up a bit? I really want to hear what you're saying. OLIVER USE YOUR FORK. What was that Amelia? OLIVER YOUR FORK IS NOT A SPACESHIP. Amelia, honey, would you start over?"

So we use the Roses and Thorns thing, take turns, and it all goes smoothly.

The one downside being Oliver completely absolutely makes up his rose and thorn. "My thorn is that today while I was playing outside the big boy Harry saw what I was playing with and came down to the Nursery area and punched me in the stomach and then he stole my shovel and well!! So I shot him with my laser shooter....I BLASTED HIM ZEEEOO ZEEEOOZEEEOOO BAM BLOO BAM BLOOO BAM!!! and then he didn't bother me anymore but that was my thorn because I also didn't have as many marshmallows on my cupcake as sister did."