I don’t have any children or grandchildren of my own but I have many great nieces and nephews ranging in age now from 22 to 4 years old. For the last 3 years my nieces’ 4 youngest girls (she also has a 22 year old daughter) come at least once a year to have a sleep over weekend at my apartment and one of their favorite things is when I take them to the Chinese restaurant for dinner followed by dessert at the Sweet Frog frozen yogurt.
We had our most recent sleepover just a few weeks ago. The oldest of the 4 girls is now 8 and her sisters, the triplets are 7 years old but they were 6 and 5 years old the first time I took them out for dinner. And what a joy they are and evidently they also make quite the impression on others with their very good behavior and manners. Their mom and dad stress that they must behave, although at home sometimes things can and does get a bit raucous, but they tell the girls that coming to my house and me taking them out (or for that matter their parents taking them places) is a privilege and that bad behavior will not be tolerated and I back them up and support them on this. I do dote on them spoil them a bit but do not tolerate any bad behavior.
Anyway when we walked into the Chinese restaurant, the owner remembered us (and FWIW when I sometimes go there for carryout, the owner always asks when I am bringing my “quadruplet granddaughters” back : ) ). The girls sat at the table and placed their napkins on their laps looked at their menus, discussing with me and with each other what they should order and patiently waited like little adults, and when our food arrived¸ each of the girls, without any prompting from me said - “thank you” to our server.
When the owner came over to our table to say hello and ask if we enjoyed our meal, one of the 7 year old triplets Lilly said to her, “I really like your restaurant. The food is very good and I like all the Chinese decorations” and the 8 year old Mel chimed in and said “Thank you. I enjoyed the food, it was very good and I like the atmosphere. I almost feel like I am really in China when we come here, it is so very nice” and one of the other triplets Madi said, “I really liked the tea, thank you”. The owner gave each of them a hug. : )
And as we were finishing our meal, a much older woman who with her husband had been seated at the table next to us was getting ready to leave and she came over and said to me, “What have you done to deserve the company of four such lovely, beautiful and polite young ladies?” I smiled and said, “Yes I am very blessed to have their company”. And all 4 of the girls said, “thank you” without any prompting and one of the triplets, Helen said, “I hope you and your husband had a nice time too”. All Verklempt and so proud I was.
Sweet!