room for improvement

When I lived in France, I often lunched with a family that included twin four-year-old girls. Their mother spent quite a lot of time during each meal issuing the reminder “Les deux cuisses sur le tambour!” (Both cheeks on your stool!)

Similarly, meals with Opie involve a lot of reinforcing, reminding, and pleas to use utensils and keep his butt in his chair. I figure this is par for the course for age four, and he is slowly learning decent-enough manners. We can take him to a restaurant and he can be trusted to sit fairly quietly and not make a huge mess or spectacle.

Still, he doesn’t have a great track record for Big Family Dinners of the Turkeyish Kind (or other special occasions). I think that he can sense his father’s nervousness (and, in my opinion, unreasonable expectations) about his behavior, and he also sometimes doesn’t like to be in the spotlight–this is why he refused to trick-or-treat, because he didn’t like people looking at him.

We were quite pleasantly shocked when on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, he sat at the table with nine other guests and politely, beautifully, neatly ate soup and salad. It was a thing of beauty–and this was after being in the car for nearly eight hours that day.

So is it any wonder that on Thanksgiving itself, he arrived at the table naked from the waist down, growling “i hate you i hate you i hate you” at anyone that glanced in his direction?

Eventually, I ate with him in the kitchen and then later he did reappear at the table and was perfectly charming. And the next day, we went to a football game at Grandma’s school with a bunch of VIPs and he voluntarily shook hands with strangers and said “Hello, Mr. Howard” politely and stayed until halftime without a single complaint.

Oh four. You are a mystery. A growly, adorable, ear-pinching mystery, and I am thankful for you every day.

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