"Don't talk with your mouth full," I say to Crabkid via a mouth full of food.

"Eat slowly, and chew your food nicely," I say, having long since dispatched my dinner in about twelve seconds.

These are the sorts of things that have been coming out of the Crabmommy mouth of late, when we sit down together for our weekend family dinners. As some of you already know, we don't eat dinner with our child during the week (shocking, I know), so Crabkid isn't always privy to our lax grownup table manners, and maybe that's why we don't pay much attention to them. But lately I've become aware of the following sad state of affairs: not only have my table manners slipped since becoming a parent, but I'm going to have to clean them up for the very same reason.

When, exactly, did my table manners become so shoddy? I certainly ought to know etiquette, thanks to my mother, boarding school, and sitting at my grandmother's table for Sunday lunch, where we rinsed our fingertips in individual water bowls before eating the fruit course! I also know all sorts of factoids involving food, and have even begun to impart these words of wisdom to my almost-4-year-old. Like, if you chew each bite of food 20 times then you will live to be 100. And if you sit up straight, keep your elbows off the table, and don't use your fork as a shovel, you will be welcomed by kings and paupers around the globe to sup at their table and partake of the bounteous riches the world has to offer. Okay, so maybe I don't put it quite that way, but the point is, Crabkid has been hearing a bunch of stuff from Mommy about how to behave at the table and why it's important to be a polite girl, but Mommy doesn't always practice what she preaches.

Can I blame my shoddy table manners on motherhood itself? (Oh, but, you know Crabmommy can!) BC (Before Child) I used to enjoy taking my time over dinner, perhaps because BC I wasn't tapped out on kitchen duties and didn't have to follow dishes with a spell of picking up tiny beads off the living room floor. BC I never ate my breakfast standing up, because BC breakfast didn't coincide with assembling a preschool lunch involving a fleet of tiny tupperwares. BC the whole business of eating was a less exhausting affair, and BC I remembered to eat lunch in my day, and therefore didn't need to nosh my nighttime meal in one chew.

But the very thing I'm trying to blame for my sloppy manners (motherhood) must motivate me to brush them up for fear of passing my slovenly ways on to the next generation. Plus Crabkid's getting old enough to twig that I'm a momocrite in these matters, and I definitely don't want a preschooler berating me for using my fingers to stuff my beak with asparagus!

So, along with other new Crabmommy self-improvement strategies, I guess I'm going to have to take smaller bites, avoid stretching for the condiments, and stop hunching like a troll over my plate. And I guess Crabhubby's going to have to shape up on this front too. But I think we can do it. We're open to improvement; we're open to change. I mean, just last week we gave $40 to Obama! And we started eating couscous!

Anyone else have a momocrite moment to share? Or do you all [yawn] do as you say?