Dinner with the Cleavers, or, ahem, the Noe-Grottas

I almost hate saying it because it's so 1950ish, but I love sitting down at the table for dinner with my family. I was raised in more of a fend-for-yourself environment, and it wasn't until Jacob came into my life that I realized how nice family dinners can be.

When we sit down to dinner, we don't answer the telephone. We don't watch TV. Maybe we play a little Talking Heads or Jane's Addiction on the stereo, but that only adds to the atmosphere rather than distracting us. Dinner in our house is a ritual family time where we can be fully present in each other's company, and I treasure it.

Really, food is symbolic of nurture. What do you put into yourself as fuel? How does it sustain you? When we sit together at the table, we give each other attention, which nurtures us. We listen to each other's stories about the day. Esme tells Jacob what she did at daycare, and Jacob shares funny stories from work. Esme is learning how to converse, but she's also seeing what mom and dad eat and how we behave at the table.

Alena, our new nanny, commented on how Esme automatically put her napkin in her lap the other day at lunch. We didn't teach her how to do that. She observed us doing it and started doing it herself. She similarly picked up the habit of saying "thank you" (which sounds more like "dit do" coming from her) because we say it to each other and to her so often. Okay, so we've had to work on "please" and really teach her that one, because she wasn't picking it up on her own. But I still maintain that teaching by example is the most effective method.

Another benefit of our family dinners is that Esme is exposed to adult food. For a short while, I kept instant mac and cheese in the house for emergencies only, i.e. when I didn't have time to cook. But I noticed that she started wanting mac and cheese all the time and became less adventurous with other foods at the dinner table. It was like kiddy-crack. Once they have it, they're hooked and they don't want other foods.

Then I started looking more closely at labels, and I realized that even the children's food I had previously thought was healthy, like Yo Baby yogurt, isn't that good for them. Yo Baby, for example, is loaded with sugar. So now she eats what we eat. At least most of the time.

Esme has long given the salad on the dinner table a wary glance. She started saying "I don't like salad" over six months ago, but recently she took notice of the salad forks. They were cool. You get to hold these two huge wooden utensils to scoop the green, leafy stuff out of the big bowl and onto the plate. She decided she liked salad after all, and now she almost always eats a few bites of it at the table. One of the things I'm most proud of is that Esme will at least try almost anything. She may not like it. She may even spit it out on her plate (a violation of manners, but hey, we've all felt like doing it from time to time). But at least she tries it.

So we may be a little June and Ward Cleaver at the dinner table. There are worse things to be.