Restaurant? American Dancing?

New Experiences!

Last weekend we had a birthday party for one of our girls. She turned 15, which is a big deal here, but we didn’t throw her a quinceanera. She’ll get a big birthday party when she turns 16. We did however take the WHOLE family out to eat. We do that like once a year, and maybe order pizza twice a year, because if we don’t make our own food, it’s expensive! Two of our little girls (M and E, 10 and 9) have only been with us about 9 months, so to my knowledge, they hadn’t been to a sit down restaurant before. We went to a buffet, and the one little girl had taken too much food, and as the waiter was clearing plates, she said “I’m saving that to take home.” I told her she couldn’t do that, and she was like “but it’s mine.” I also had to tell her, that if she was still eating something, she shouldn’t let the waiter take it off the table. She was eating some dessert, and set down her fork to drink, when the waiter absentmindedly picked up her plate to throw it in the trash. I was like, “are you still eating” and she said, “yeah” and I told her, “you have to tell him not to take your plate, that you still want it” and she gave me this look like, but he’s an adult, and I shouldn’t tell him to NOT DO SOMETHING!
I never imagined I would have to teach a child how to go out to eat, but I suppose that is part of education. I showed off my advanced mothering skills by finishing the food on her plate. ;)
Then we danced like crazy people, the chicken dance. (not my favorite, but nice to do with little kids, and really, I’ll take any dancing!) Except the two little ones, M & E, were just looking at us trying to figure out what we were doing. I think they might not have heard/seen that before. As soon as they got comfortable with the “swing your partner” part of it, we switched to the hokey-pokey. Granted, they don’t know a lot of English yet (even though Gabe was teaching E, “eyes, ears, mouth and nose” with the WRONG body parts. And E seems to have that down!) So they tried to do the hokey-pokey, all the while I was grabbing E’s elbows, and legs, hands, and waists to facilitate movement. They were so confused. Haha. And our dance moves were always one step behind everyone else, except for the spinning around in place! We were good at that.
E-- especially is in that stage when she hugs you before asking for something....oh wait. I don't think some kids grow out of that ;)