Mr. Manners

David and I have been trying to teach Reagan to use his manners since he took his first breath, and we are beginning to see a polite little boy emerge. Most of the time we need to do some reminding, but we rarely ever have to tell him what to say. For example, if he is given something all we need to say is "Remember to use your manners," (instead of telling him exactly what to say) and he'll say "Thank you."

Today Reagan and I did our weekly trip to By Panda. For those of you who have never been around Reagan personally, this is his name for Chick-fil-a. He has called it By Panda for about year now...this is because the By Panda (see, it is just so common for me and David to call Chick-fil-a "By Panda" that I just typed it without thinking) we frequent is right next to a Panda Express. Which, of course, has pandas all over the building. So this restaurant we started going to that serves Reagan chicken nuggets became "By Panda".

Back to the story. We were at By Panda, and Reagan had pretty much finished his lunch. He decided that he was going to go into the play area. I stayed at the table (yes, I could see him) in case he wanted to come back and eat some more lunch. After a bit I decided that he was finished so I cleaned our table and went into the play room. I had been watching Reagan play with a little girl who was about his age. The girl's grandmother was in the room, too. I sat down next to her, and she said, "Your son asked my granddaughter her name, but she wouldn't tell it to him until they went up to the top of the slide." I said, "Did he tell her his name?" And she said, "Yes. He said: Hi. My name is Reagan. What is your name?"

Yippee!!!! He is always calling kids that he plays with but doesn't know things like "the green girl" or the "the red boy" depending on what color shirt they are wearing. I finally told him that he needs to find out their names, and I told him what to say. "Hi. My name is Reagan. What is your name?" Today was the first time, that I know of, that he did it all by himself without me reminding him.

By the way, her name was Katherine...not "the pink girl".