The Dinner Hour

We typically have two dinner services at Raleigh House: one for the bambini, and one for Julie a Ted. Separating them means that we can eat without interruption to fetch this or that item or retrieve Birdie's sippy cup of milk from the floor (which is when she will reach out some food covered paw--wing?--to grasp a fistful of Julie's hair), but it also means we eat late--like 8pm or 8:30pm late. So some nights, we try to eat together and on some of those nights, we think, "Why don't we do this more often?! It's like a Norman Rockwell painting here!" Other nights are like tonight.

Bird Brigade, let us begin by noting that Birdie prefers to take her watermelon IN. A. BOWL!!!!! Thank you very much. It took perhaps a few breakdowns for this point to be made. The first breakdown was the spitting out while wailing of watermelon that had been eaten from the cutting board! The horror! Can you even imagine?! The second breakdown was over the incorrect guess that the first breakdown was due to the size of the watermelon pieces. The third breakdown was over the watermelon bowl being empty. (Birdie isn't sure she'll be eating at this slop house again. The service is really spotty.)

Meanwhile, Our Hero is back to vigorous protesting over this whole "hand washing" notion. Protestation momentarily exacerbated by the acquiring of an owie because of being distracted in the smallest room of the house with lots of hard objects ripe for bonking upon by the tantrum over hand washing. Also, he would have us know that he does not want pasta. (He's not alone on this one--Birdie quite clearly has no interest in pasta of any kind.) Or maybe he does now that he has seen the bread on the table and knows the path to one starch is through another. But not with tomato sauce on it. No. Nothing could be more revolting. And tonight, he shall eat his watermelon with his hands. (Guess it's a good thing he washed them.)

Here you see Birdie with her watermelon bowl, and the dinner aftermath. Please note the partially eaten chunk of bread in the foreground, which was tossed aside when Joe high tailed it after Julie when she went outside to take a picture of the A Joe drew before dinner (happier times, Fans, happier times) which totally bowled Julie over. It's like a full out A! (It's the orange one. The yellow is also a full out A, but less impressive as Julie drew it a few days ago.)