Dinner at our house

We sat down to dinner tonight - dinner as usual.  Our dining room amplifies noise and our kids are NOISY!!  I recognize that it's noisy, but I get used to it- or just give up trying for anything different because I'm usually in survival mode with Shawn gone.  Shawn, on the other hand, has been gone every day of the week except for weekends lately and I think he has become a little bit unaccustomed to the noise.  What do you think?

He kept requesting that everyone quiet down, or at least limit the noise to talking. (Several of our kids make noise for the sole purpose of making noise).  Before we knew it, Shawn left the table and came back with these ear things- that we usually wear when we're running noisy equipment.  He said, "You guys might not believe this, but I can hear everything at just the right volume now."

What a sweet, little innocent face:)  This boy is going through a really picky phase where he won't try anything new or anything that he decides looks suspicious. I even let him help me make the green salad tonight and he was trying to snitch some of everything we put into it.  Once we sat down, he wouldn't even taste what he had been eating! And he wouldn't try the sweet potato because it was orange- I know he'd like it; the rest of us do!  Anyway, he spends the first ten minutes of dinner crying at the top of his lungs at his big "dinner disappointment", while the rest of us try to coax him, trick him, (or force him) into trying his food. He spends the last ten minutes or so making REALLY loud noises that he supposes are really entertaining to the rest of us. (Well, he's so cute that it generally is...not the noise, but the faces, etc. that go with it.) He  never really eats a thing and wakes up exceedingly cranky in the mornings, on a very empty stomach. Maybe I should break down and let him eat something else, but I AM DETERMINED TO WIN!!

Towards the end of dinner, I generally feel someone massaging my feet, (everyone in my family knows that this is one of my favorite things) and notice that Nolan has slipped beneath the table to pamper me a bit.  He works on me for a while, as  I "ooo and ahhh", and then he moves on to do everyone else... one at a time.