Polite as a Princess

Success! Our Good Manners Tea Party was a complete success! We hosted two little ladies and one little man for an afternoon of tea, or some representation thereof, finger sandwiches, cookies, and good times. I was so impressed with what a good host Cameron was! He was flitting around between guests bringing them sandwiches and lemon slices and napkins when they spilled. He said "please" and "thank you" and "may I offer you" and I was quite proud. Cassia really enjoyed putting sugar into everyone's tea (and her mouth) and even did us all the supreme favor of skipping her usual run around the living room with her panties around her ankles after going to the bathroom.

At one point, Cassia also kind of surprised me by begging me to read the Princess book of manners to everyone. I felt like the children's librarian with a crowd of preschoolers pushing in to see the pictures, lol, but it was nice to bring a bit of themed learning into the situation without seeming like I was pushing it on anyone. I was a bit nervous about that because MomK is an unschooler. They came for a party, not a class, you know? But her daughter is a Princess fiend and was definitely front and center for the read.

The funny thing about the afternoon was that once all the greetings and formalities of service were out of the way, everyone just kind of sat in their seats, politely, and stared at each other for a while, lol. I guess I forgot to go over small talk. It's not one of my strong points anyway. And what examples we mothers were! We sat at the "grown up table" swapping ER horror stories, lol. Not quite polite tea party small talk, but hey, we're moms. It was either that or discussing dirty diapers. ;)

Speaking of diapers, Greyson went over to Grammie's house for the party. The kids were sitting at the coffee table and I just didn't want to have to deal with him crawling around and trying to pull everything off the table to teethe on. My mom had been begging me to leave him with her sometime anyway and it was really nice to be able to spend two hours focused on C&C. Unfortunately, Greyson was not as thrilled with the situation and cried almost the entire time. Poor Mom looked like she had been run over by a truck by the time we got there. I guess we won't be doing that again. The little bugger was an angel for me the whole rest of the day though. Even with a diaper rash so bad that it bled(!), he never cried as long as he could see that I was there. Can you say Momma's Boy? Kidding, of course. I'm actually thrilled to be his whole world... if only he would go back to sleeping in his crib for more than 2 hours at a time.

Anyway, after our luncheon and baby rescue we all went over to the local Park Day. It was kind of fun because the boys went in one car and the girls in another, lol. So funny how something so trivial can be such an adventure, lol. I was thinking how great it would be to kind of join my two regular homeschool park groups together (the tea party guests were regulars from our Friday park day) but NO ONE was there! I guess now that it's winter, no one wants to play in 40 or 50 degree weather even if it is sunny. It must be an age thing because the Friday preschool group gets together regardless of temperature because those little bodies just NEED to get out. I guess the older crowd at Wednesday's park day is less willing to sacrifice comfort for fun. Regardless, we had a fabulous time playing and spinning on the spinning things. Cassia, such a big girl at the tea party, suddenly became helpless again once my arms were full of baby. Coincidence? I think not. But we played all afternoon long and finally parted with tears of "but I still want to PLAY!" which is always nice to hear.

No schoolwork has been done since Monday. I spent Tuesday cleaning (not that you could tell, lol) and making sandwich spreads. Today, Thursday, I doubt we'll get any bookwork done either because it's already 11:30 and no one is dressed yet and we have to go to gymnastics in an hour and a half. This weekend we're off on a little mini vacation to BIL's house and then a Super Bowl party at some old friends'. Friday DH is going to take the bus to work and after a trip to a really cool science museum near his work, we're going to pick him up and head out to BIL's house from there. So it'll be a pretty busy weekend and I'm just going to have to chalk this week up as practical learning. :)

Happy Groundhog Day!