Manners Madeline

Not much terribly exciting is going on in the Cudnik household these days. We are in the middle of another hot, Georgia summer. We really only go outside for walks before 9am and to the pool. The rest of our time is usually spent in the house- making me so grateful for our playroom.

As of late, Jonathan and I have been spending more time trying to get Katherine to use some table manners.  Let me put this in perspective.  Here is a picture of Katherine chowing down on some Moes when she was a little over 1 year old:

Cute, right?  Well, now at 2 1/2, not much has changed.  She almost exclusively uses her hands to eat which makes a huge mess of her hands, hair, clothes, table, floor, and on and on.  We don't expect her to be prepared for tea with the Queen, but we would like to see her use her spoon, fork and napkin- not perfectly- but to be practicing.

Working on manners during meals just added another dimension to meal time- getting kids to actually eat is focus enough.  So, we decided to make it a little fun with Manners Madeline.  S has been inviting us to tea.  Here are some pictures of our tea parties:

The Menu

Manners Madeline and Priscilla

Practicing our Manners

So excited!

It has been such a sweet time.  It gives me some intentional time with Katherine, and it gives us a seperate time to work on our manners.  The trick has been Manners Madeline- who watches Katherine throughout the week and only invites little girls who are using their manners to her tea parties. 

It's so funny to watch how carefully she drinks her lemonade and how dainty she is when handling her tea cupcake and finger sandwich. 

So, we still have a long way to go- she prefers to stick her strawberries on the ends of her fingers and still finds her hands the most efficient way to eat- but the tea parties are helping- mainly because Manners Madeline is always watching.