It's funny the things you promise your children. Other parents promise their kids toys, trips to the zoo, movie nights. I promised Leon a kitchen table.
For weeks he had been bugging us to let him sit at the big table. At first when we said it was time to eat he would run and get Ree's old booster seat, bring it to the table, and show us which chair we should put it in so that he could sit in it. (He had already been sitting in it when we cook.) When that didn't work, he started running to the table, pulling out a chair, and sitting down in it, hoping we would serve him there.
And it's not like we were trying to deny him the milestone of moving to the big table. The problem was just our big table wasn't big enough. When we left Athens, we sold most of our furniture since it was mostly well used when we got it. We figured we could at least upgrade to newer second-hand stuff and then we wouldn't have the expense of renting and buying gas for a bigger U-Haul to get the stuff from Ohio to North Carolina. This theory worked out pretty well, and when we got here we were able to get a cheap little wooden table and two chairs from Goodwill. We found two additional chairs in the same style at a local discount store, and we painted everything to match. For us, we were pretty dang coordinated. But if you do the math, this only gave us four chairs, and we have five people. And of course we would have to move Michael to the big table too so that it's FAIR. We could've just purchased another chair, but the table wasn't that big, and there is no way to put 5 or 6 people at it without everyone touching. If you've ever had children or been a child, you know that touching is BAD.
But last week I got paid, and so the first thing I did was go on Craigslist to search for a table. (We are slowly upgrading!) I was actually able to find something that we could afford that didn't look like someone's grandmother had died and her relatives were trying to unload it as quickly as possible, and the owners were even kind enough to deliver it to us. Once the table was purchased, the next step was to buy a second booster seat, and we took care of that on Saturday morning. Since then, we have been enjoying true family meals.
I have to admit, these make me insanely happy. I'm sure the pregnancy hormones are partly to blame, but I'll take the good with the bad. I love that we are all sitting in one place interacting. And the table is a giant square, so the kids aren't even touching each other. The best part, though, has to be the dinner conversation.
Ree loves knock-knock jokes, and the old one about the banana and the orange comes up regularly. Last week Leon tried to tell it.
Leon: Knock, knock.
Me: Who's there?
Leon: Knock, knock.
Me: Who's there?
Leon: Knock, knock.
Me: Who's there?
We repeated this about 15 times before I declared it was the last time he got to say "Knock, knock."
It came up again tonight. This attempt was a little closer.
Leon: Knock, knock.
Me: Who's there?
Leon: Orange.
Me: Orange who?
Leon: Knock, knock.
Me: Who's there?
Leon: Banana.
Me: Banana who?
Leon: Knock, knock...
...and then he repeated the banana part 15 times before I cut him off. It's much harder to get to the punchline when you already used it.
Michael was dying to get into the conversation and he decided to jump in at this point. He was going to correctly tell the joke.
Michael: Knock, knock.
Me: Who's there?
Michael: Orange.
Me: (cringing) Orange who?
Michael: Knock, knock.
Me: Who's there?
Michael: Banana.
Me: (Seriously cringing) Banana who?
Michael: BANANA!
And then he almost fell out of his chair he was laughing so hard. And then we repeated this about 5 times before I cut him off from his joke telling too.
Now that I read this, it just sounds annoying, and maybe it was a little annoying at the time. But it's a good annoying.
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