Oct. 22, 2009

We’ve decided to break out the china.

Let’s face it: Most formal dining room tables don’t see much food. Thanks to their eat-in kitchen counterparts, they’re either a sparkly household show piece, a catchall for important items like last year’s Christmas decorations or a make-shift computer center.

Now and then, Sunday dinners, or special events like meeting the in-laws, require further dusting and usification, but in most cases, dining in the dining room is old hat.

Up to this point in our child rearing, we have taken our evening meal in shifts. The kids snack at 3:30, followed by a nutritious processed dinner like chicken nuggets, frozen burritos or mac-n-cheese at 5 p.m. — eaten at the kitchen bar. The actual cooked food is portioned off to the adults an hour later, and is usually made up of delightfully foreign sounding ingredients.

“You know,” Mr. Bread Winner says the other day, “isn’t it about time we start eating dinner as a family?”

What? Eat together? With them? “Um,” I say, “Don’t you think they’re a little young?”

“Harrison is six,” he says, “We should probably start feeding them real food sometime soon.” Real food.

Right.

So the other night we decided to set the table. Considering the fact that our children have never actually sat in our dining room, this was a particularly thrilling experience.

“Why do we have to put these things under the plates?” Harrison asks.

“They’re called placemats,” I say, trying my best to pretend that he’s actually seen one before.

“Oh, do we color on them or sumpin’?” Good golly, the kid was obviously raised by gorillas.

When the garage door finally opened and Dad walked in the door, we were quite a sight for empty stomachs.

Do you have any idea what happens to children when you make them wait an extra hour for dinner? Just picture a hyena that’s been sprayed in the eyes with Mace. At one point I thought they might actually eat each other.

In lieu of our maiden dining voyage, I decided to cook something that would appeal to most members of the family: tacos. Everybody likes tacos, right?

“What are those?” Rex, our 4-year-old, screamed as I carried the pan into the dining room.

“They’re tacos; you’ll love them!”

“NOOO!” he says, watching me take the food out of the kitchen and set it on the dining room table. “Not in here; we can’t eat in here; we have to eat in the kitchen!”

This reaction is partially my fault. As babies, I train our children to believe that food eaten away from the kitchen counter will bring nightmares, monsters and long-term time-outs. Why? Because, like any good mother, I love my carpet more than my children.

By the time we strapped the baby into a booster seat and blessed our meal, the tacos were cold and soggy, the milk was warm, and Rex was curled under the bar in a fetal position begging for a peanut butter sandwich (he doesn’t handle change very well).

I’m trying to see the big picture here. One down, 784,921 to go.

Kill me now.

See more at Annie's blog at regardingannie.com