November Tea Party

A friend of mine has three boys and a three-year-old girl and, understandably, finds it increasingly hard to give one-on-one attention to her youngest (probably to any one child!) and that her daughter doesn't get to do much "girlie" stuff. So my friend had the idea to get three three-year-old girls together for a special mother-daughter event. In the end, we were really glad there were only three girls because, at three, they still need a lot of direction to stay contained and on task. We were also glad we kept the girls the same age within a few months' range so that nobody was competing with someone much older and more competent.

Our first get-together was a tea party, which I ended up hosting just because of logistics. First the girls played with a doll house. This held much appeal because two of the girls don't have a doll house and, while my Mary does, her only playmate is a brother who uses the furniture and dolls for anything other than their intended purpose.

Then we sat down for the tea party, which was much easier than the fanciness much suggest. We used a combination of two grandmothers' beautiful dishes passed down to us women--gorgeous things we would be unlikely ever to spend money on, so we're especially grateful to have received them. I'm sure our grandmothers would be distressed that we were mixing glass, faux silver, real silver, steel, ceramic, and china on one table, but this is the best we could do and it looked fancy to us! My tea pot is missing in action (broken? thrown away?), so we boiled water in a regular pot and steeped in our individual cups--don't tell anyone about that faux pas. We ate finger sandwiches, pears, and store-bought deviled eggs, cupcakes, and cookies. This pregnant mommy knew she had limited energy so cut baking off the list!

We used the tea party as an opportunity to teach etiquette. The napkin goes neatly in the lap, here is what you do with it when you are done, here is how you pass a plate, here is how you request something or decline something, here is how you make a cup of tea, and so forth. What I have found interesting is that in the two days since, Mary repeatedly brings up the etiquette lessons she learned, beaming, "I learned that at my tea party!" So all the same lessons I'd taught her with irritation and admonitions at the meal table had little effect, but when I treated her as special, she dressed up, and got to behave in a formal way, the lessons sunk in as something she desired to embody. I think there is a lesson for Mama and Daddy in there.

After the tea party, we did a craft making princess crowns. I gave an impromptu lesson (read: Mama did not have energy or time actually to think something up properly) on being a saintly princess. We talked about princess and queens who have been saints and what behaviors they exhibited that were pleasing to God. Would a princess do this or that? Yank toys? Hit her brother? How would she take care of the poor in her kingdom? Bonus points to the three-year-old (not mine) who offered one saintly behavior, "to suffer for Jesus": good job to her mother and father for raising a Catholic!

Margaret was not supposed to be with us and it was distracting having a toddler there. She had fallen asleep right before Chris departed, so I said she should stay there and it would be okay because she'd nap most of the time. Twenty minutes later, she woke abruptly and then was a cranky pants because she hadn't napped nearly long enough.

Meanwhile, the boys were not without fun. The dads got together and let the boys run around in the woods and, apparently, even ride a John Deere tractor! John was in heaven and didn't realize he had missed any special event.